CRM - November 2008 - (Page 26)

Generational Spending Generation Y “Boomer parents, especially because they lived through the gender revolution, were very conscious about raising [girls] equally.” Not that boys are falling behind: The two have more in common today than ever before—equally interested in success, careers, and achievement. “Success is much more complicated than money,” Subramanyam adds. “It’s about balance. It’s wanting a whole life.” As gender barriers crumble, interests are no longer segregated into pinks and blues. “Many categories of advertising were focused on boys,” Subramanyam says.“That’s not true anymore.” Especially important, she adds, is that girls tend to spend more. And teen boys and young men have their own surprise for marketers: Turns out they’re just as likely to stay home as girls are, and are just as much into their appearance, Subramanyam says. One recent Gen Y marketing success is Unilever’s Axe body spray: Despite its controversial campaigns—which critics say degrade women—it’s one back-toschool product every hormonal teenage male has to have. At a low cost ($4.99), it’s affordable even for a guy with a thriftshop wardrobe. Moreover, Axe has managed to sway its target audience with a Web site loaded with dating and grooming advice and interactive games that pique a young male’s interest on a particular topic—sex. In doing so, United Kingdom–based consumer-product research firm Mintel found that Lynx (as Axe is known in Australia and the U.K.) had secured a higher level of appeal and customer loyalty than all other brands. REDEFINING COOL “All generations are comfortable with technology, but this is the generation that’s been formed by technology,” Subramanyam says. “There’s no technology with a capital ‘T’ for them. It’s not something separate. It’s just something they do.” In fact, walking around the mall one day, Subramanyam spotted a teenage girl sporting a shirt emblazoned with the message “Texting is my favorite form of reading.” Digital is the language they speak. Marketers need to embrace it. Until recently, a Gen Y consumer’s def26 inition of “cool” was highly dependent on clothes and shoes. Now, the attention and the dollars are being pushed toward technology.“A few years ago,” Subramanyam says, “you just didn’t have young people spending that much money on high-tech items.” With products like the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac—and pretty much any item in the Apple family— technology is the new black. Whereas a creative design used to be the differentiator, it’s now the point of entry. “If you’re not in the design space, they probably won’t enter your store at all,” Subramanyam says. One iPod may main ways of reaching me: the radio, the TV, the mall, or Seventeen magazine,” she says. The proliferation of communication channels, driven by the Internet, has undoubtedly made it harder to pinpoint this elusive group. As a result, she says, marketers need to listen more than lead. With more channels to feed, marketers are forced to compete with more content. Wells recalls Thursday nights that used to give teenagers the option of watching either Dawson’s Creek and Felicity or Dawson’s Creek and Felicity. “We like to make the assumption that, because we do our jobs as marketers, people want what Limiting Generation Y’s options flies directly in the face of how this generation functions. look the same as the next, but rarely, if ever, will any two have the same songs or videos. From playlists, to ringtones, to background images, Gen Y enjoys the duality of fitting in and being different. This struggle to be unique has reinvigorated the do-it-yourself (DIY) trend, currently more popular among females than males. Subramanyam met a girl who would buy designer jeans only to cut them up to make them her own. She advises marketers to look at how consumers are interacting not just with brands, but with the products themselves, and to provide the tools and materials to facilitate it—perhaps by cross-selling consumers a prepackaged kit of jewels or design patterns. Sites such as Etsy.com, an online marketplace, and MyHandworkStudio.com, a needle-arts community for kids, cater to DIY folks who create their own projects. Customization, says Tina Wells, chief executive officer of “tweenteen” research firm Buzz Marketing Group, is “very cool for back to school.” THE GOOGLE GENERATION Wells started her company when she was 16. Today, just over a decade later, she says she’s seen a dramatic change in the market. “When I was a kid, there were four we have,” Wells says.“When kids have the option to make their own TV show and post it on YouTube, you have to do a better job of creating something that’s worth them tuning in to.” When Gossip Girl debuted on The CW last September, there was hope of it becoming a breakout hit with teens. Packed with what producers thought its audience wanted—sex, scandal, and beautiful people—it was a recipe that worked in the 1990s, when teenagers became avid fans of (the original!) Beverly Hills 90210. But Gossip Girl, while generating enough buzz to make a marketer giddy, has failed to live up to network expectations. Some say the show has effectively missed its target, failing to viscerally connect with the high schoolers who, for one thing, actually have time to watch scheduled programming. “Consumers are so multifaceted these days that they’re not accepting the same old bag of tricks, even if it’s wrapped in an attractive package,” Wells wrote in an online article for the Huffington Post. They want something they can relate to, and Gossip Girl, she continued, “is something just too remote and far-fetched to be truly compelling.” One promising aspect, though, was The CW’s commitment to online streaming, www.destinationCRM.com CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2008 http://www.Etsy.com http://www.MyHandworkStudio.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2008

CRM - November 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Working with the Years CRM on Twitter Virtual Spenders Contact Centers Chatting to Success The Complexity Chasm Required Reading Generational Spending: A Special Report Who, What, Where, When, Y The Slackers’ X-cellent Adventure The Boomer Boom The Matures Endure Boosting Productivity North of the Border Changing the Channel Invicta’s Thrill of Victory Secret of My Success Connect Re:Tooling Pint of View

CRM - November 2008

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