Kids these days… they adopt new tastes and tech apps as easily as they ink a new tattoo. Along with deciding which friends to follow, they also face the same harsh economic challenges as the rest of us (though social media may give them an edge).
If you’re already focused on youth culture, you know the challenge of keeping up. If you don’t think that youth is your target, you may want to reconsider. Read our latest Fresh Perspectives newsletter on Youth Culture and find out why.
The New York Times recently ran an article about how certain companies, like Burger King, have begun consolidating their agencies (essentially eliminating their multicultural agencies). The author, Stuart Elliott, notes that this move is “indicative of a trend that has accelerated as younger consumers, who are often less likely to use traditional labels of race and ethnicity, have become more of a force in the consumer marketplace.”
We do lots of work with youth at Cheskin Added Value, and much of it focuses on youth trends. We are repeatedly bemused by “trendspotters” who breathlessly promote the “next big thing” that they saw the “cool kids” doing. Surprisingly, we’ve seen that a lot over the years, and it seems to keep repeating, as different companies come and go, each claiming to understand the mysterious lives of teens.
Teens can appear hard to understand from an adult perspective, but teens, like any subculture, can be easily understood once you dispel some common myths, and apply some useful frameworks. Let’s look at a few of each…
Thirty-thousand text messages. This is the number of messages 16 year-old Melissa recently revealed to me that she had sent from her mobile phone the previous month. Let’s do some quick math: that’s approximately 1,000 texts every day. Assuming she sleeps 8 hours a day that leaves 16 hours of texting time, or about one text a minute every single day. Yikes!
Brian Eno famously stated that there is not enough Africa in computers, way back in May 1995 in a Wired magazine interview with Kevin Kelly. As a hyperkinetic person who doesn’t like to sit for long spells in front of a keyboard, I agreed with him. Africa is finally coming to computing, some 15 years later, and I think it will really change how we interact with, and even think about, computing. Why?
Teen unemployment is up (26%). Teen spending is down. Household net worth is down – by 20% , the lowest since post-WWII – and 40% of jobless adults believe that they are beginning to see behavior change among their children because of their situation. With drastic cuts in education impacting arts, sports and culture and the stimulus money draining from the 1 billion set aside specifically for youth employment, the near future for teens is not looking bright. Is there a silver lining – anywhere?
Clients and colleagues have been sharing a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, “The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born,” that looks at differences in cell phone and internet usage between US born and foreign born Hispanics. While the report is methodologically sound and provides invaluable information, I did not find the results as surprising or shocking as other readers.
“There were three little kids, around 11 years old, just staring at me as I got on the plane,” my fiancée said as I picked her up at the airport. “It was crazy, they just stared at me the whole way down the aisle. Then I realized they were looking at my Silly Bandz.” My hand immediately slapped my forehead as I realize my fiancée was wearing bracelets meant to feed the crazed collecting appetites of 11 year olds. Apparently the mere glimpse of Silly Bandz was like blood in the water for the kids on the plane. Come to find out, they were quite the hit at my fiancée’s bachelorette party – clearly a wild event.
What is a business model?
Take a second.
Write your answer down.
Now ask your colleagues what they think and to agree.
“Why hasn’t America moved beyond the old, stultifying debate on race in the age of Obama?” asks this weekend’s New York Times.
Every time an issue related to race relations in the United States hits the news, we are inundated with references to the presumed ideal that President Obama purportedly represents – the Post Racial Society. Articles and news pundits fill the airwaves lamenting the shortfall of this generally undefined state of being. This has been happening increasingly since the day Obama was elected (literally, go back and check the editorial sections of major newspapers from November 7, 2008). I thought then (and said it that very day as a speaker at a conference on the multicultural media consumer), and think now, that this should stop. Here’s why:
