Success in a bottle

Last week we had to review 30 successful case studies on youth marketing. We then did a lot of thinking about how to pull out the themes and I thought I'd share with you.

First off, there seemed to be five messaging themes which emerged:
1. make me look good (tribes and respect)
2. self-expression (creativity and music)
3. freedom (indpendence and control)
4. adding value to my life (e.g. interesting/humorous content),
5. rebellion (anti-cool, anti-corporate)

Secondly, the media approaches showed TV still works, very little use of other mainstream media, but insight driven use of digital, mobile, social media, branded content and word of mouth. Interactivity featured throughout.

On the way through this project we also took a peek at a number of other sources. One which caught my attention briefly was http://chasingcoolbook.com/ which had one interesting quote: "looking in another person's backyard is usually a replacement to thinking yourself, and unless you can execute better than your neighbour is a surefire way to second-best". I think the c word (cool) is one of those horribly vague words like engagement which is next to useless unless you define what you mean. In fact I was very pleased to get through an entire 1 hour presentation on youth without mentioning the c word once!

The four case studies we highlighted as interesting approaches to youth marketing (by which I am broadly referring to 16-24s in this instance) were Nescafe's Big Break, HP's The Computer is Personal Again (this was broader than 16-24 but had a lot of relevance to the particular client, O2's Unlimited Orgy of Fun (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Y_slhb3fY) and Cadbury Gorilla which actually has an interesting case study behind it, not just a one off viral ad.

For those OMD-ers reading this, let me konw if you want a copy of the final presentation.

A final word: as above the tendency to analyze youth by producing endless lists is easy to fall into. So, we ended up presenting one territory which we think sits in the middle - but I can't give that away here!