Saturday 25 May 2013

Youth, modern guinea-pigs of the leading brands, part 3 Manifestations & conclusion





Youth, modern guinea-pigs of the leading brands

The most innovative companies, according to YOUTH, are the ones that dare to focus on the smaller group of innovators instead of the mass: the early majority and the late majority. If a product or service is successful (read: if the innovators and early adopters like and buy it), the early majority will follow and so on.

If you choose the most influential teenagers and young adults to represent your innovation, then you’re a clever brand. I must admit, I does take some guts to focus on the small group of ‘hip’ innovators in the city, instead of focussing directly on the mass.  But if your product appeals to the ‘leading’ youth, a company has a chance to win a bonus; a product or service that is slowly but surely spreading to become a mass trend, resulting from their new reputation as an innovative and trendy brand.

Examples of manifestations of the trend: Youth, modern guinea-pigs of the leading brands


 1 ‘Brands Meets Blog’
‘Brands Meets Blog’ is a company that helps businesses to connect with targeted bloggers to create genuine, authentic content to promote a product, a brand or a service. And Brand Meets Blog has certainly some big clients, for example: Garnier, L’oréal Paris and Kellogs.


2 Red Bull ambassadors

Red Bull has not only their famous Red Bull girls, who are most of the time typically sexy, spontaneous and energetic girls that  represent and dole out the cans that give you wings on campus or on hip spots in the city.

Red Bull has also started ‘Red Bull University’, a 300+ student network empowered with the task of building Red Bull as a global brand, on campus. It’s a part time job for social students who can influence the crowd. A part time job, during your school week.

Red Bull is a leading and progressive brand in the marketing world. They dare to focus on young ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ and believe the rest will follow, and yes they do.

By involving young people completely in their way of representing the brand, - f.e. they’re looking for student brand managers, who can lobby for them on campus -, they reach a huge audience. It’s not for nothing that they are indeed a leading brand, thanks to their modern guinea-pigs
.
ConclusionBrands and youth are a great combination. Brands have to keep up with the fast changing interests and developments in society. Youth knows better than anyone what are the newest hypes and trends in their subcultures, because they live at the same pace as the velocity of society does.
Brands and youth are connected to each other and leading brands have well noted that young people appreciate the opinions within their own social circle more than some celebrity it’s opinion.

Quality time with friends is the best time they have. Because of their busy lifestyles, relaxing with friends is the best way to spend time and take a break from their 24/7 incentive life. At a friday night in the pub or a cup of coffee in their break, this is where the conversations happen. Also about the newest innovative products or other interesting novelties. These moments are crucial for huge leading companies. They want youth to talk about their brand and to ensure that more and more interesting people are going to talk and write about it and eventually buy it.

Youth are looking for flexible jobs and representing a brand is most of the time a social affair. And inspirational and influential bloggers? They will just get products for free to show them off in the fashionable streets of London.  One year later everyone will wear that particular pair of Ray Bann  sunglasses and everyone will use that solar powered laptop sleeve from Mac.




References


VPRO . (2011). De BV IK. Retrieved March 19th, 2013 from: http://programma.vpro.nl/themadebvik/
Wikipedia .(2013). diffusion of innovations theory. retrieved May 16th, 2013 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
Becki King . (2012).The motherhood. Retrieved May 20th 2013 from http://themotherhood.com/blog/bloggers-to-brands-best-practices-for-working-together/
Brand meets blog .(2013). Brand meets blog. Retrieved May 19th 2013 from http://www.brandmeetsblog.com/
Red Bull University. (2013). Red Bull University. Retrieved May 20th 2013 from http://www.redbullu.com/

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