The Internet According to Kids and the 21st Century Woman
It was an awful lot to try and squeeze into one hour: Marketing to kids alone is the basis of conferences like Kid Power and Youth Marketing. To add marketing to women to the mix, and to have three people making presentations, meant that the best you could hope for beyond the topline information that trotted out the usual suspects - media fragmentation, marketing to kids takes authenticity, kids like customization, and moms and kids are spending less time watching television and more time online than ever before - was some lively Q&A and interesting take away factoids.
The Q&A did get a bit lively when the discussion turned to blogging, and whether companies ought to be blogging with the idea of communicating to kids and women. Jorian Clarke correctly noted that if companies are going to do it, do it right: Dedicate the resources, and realize that not everything that will be said on your blog will be positive. To which a particularly enthusiastic audience member jumped to her feet and added: If you’re not going to blog, at the very least participate in the conversation that’s happening on other blogs, because whether you participate or not, the conversation is happening. Well said.
Some interesting factoids came courtesy of Mary Meehan who said the average age of grandparents in the U.S. right now is 48. By 2007 there will be 32 million boomer grandparents, up from 20 million today. That’s a lot of purchasing power, particularly given that grandparents typically like to spoil their grandkids.
Kathleen Gasperini asked and answered: How do kids in North America find out about new brands and products? From their friends, of course, with 42.1% of survey respondents saying so. What’s second? Not TV (that’s fifth at 8.6%) ... not the Internet (that’s third, at 9%) ... not stores (that’s fourth, at 8.9%). magazines. Yep—at 12.6%, magazines came in pretty strong for brand and product awareness. They’re strong in Europe and Japan, too. Perhaps print isn’t dead after all
