Youth marketing: six questions you need to ask when planning a campaign

Teen communications expert Sarah Newton of Gen Y Guide shares her ingredients for a good youth marketing campaign.

The youth world changes quickly and you need to be on top of your game. You need to be with them every step of the way and to act quickly to get any traction.

When it comes to youth marketing, I think we need to follow a system that makes sure your messages get through to youth by answering these key questions:

1. What is the conversation that your product is/could be part of?

2. Who and where are they having this conversation?

3. How can you tap them on the shoulder and interject into this conversation?

4. How can the information you share be so great that they pass it on?

5. How can they help you find the solution and how can that solution be customised, even just a little?

6. How can what you do solve a problem for them and a wider society?

So saying that, who in my opinion is doing a great job at the moment?

The X Factor

The reality show has always done a great job getting youth on side, but this year they have surpassed themselves.

They know that, come show night, people want to share their opinions on the acts. They want to feel like a judge and have their say through social media.

Before an act goes on, The X Factor post a picture of them back stage. While they are performing they ask fans what they think. After the performance, they add another picture, asking for fans’ thoughts. Some of the pictures get near to 9000 likes and comments can get anywhere up to 5000. To think they are engaging this many people during the show is phenomenal – and all in real time. You feel part of the programme.

And at elimination, well you can only imagine how mad Facebook gets!

The X Factor’s social media assets don’t just come to life on show night either. The contestants do video blogs, we get pictures of rehearsal clips from the best bit of the shows and The X Factor magazine, the opportunity to download the songs the contestants sung on iTunes, and they are even asking for access to your X-Factor home parties and releasing a video show, the F Factor.

You can’t help but look at their social media presence and think: brilliant!

The X Factor on Twitter
The X Factor on Facebook

Talk Talk

The sponsors of The X Factor have done something totally outstanding this year: a campaign that lets people make their own music videos to be shown during the ad breaks.

Apart from appealing to every young person’s ‘One video away from being famous’ dream, this campaign can show us all how to engage young people in a few very clever ways.

Firstly, it provides the structure; it asks do you want to sing, dance or play in the band. It starts the video, adds some sound effects, but does not tell you how to do it – you decide. It gives you the structure and allows you be as creative as you want within that structure. It allows young people to be creative, and some of them are so creative. The only rule is, keep it clean, this is a family show!

Secondly, once it is done it allows you to customise it, changing colours and effects to suit you, ensuring that no two videos are ever the same, making each one feel unique. It even sends you an email telling you that the judges have picked it to appear on the site, making you feel special.

Thirdly, it picks up on a current trend, particularly in young girls, of making YouTube videos of them dancing with songs playing in the background.

And finally, it makes them shareable in every way you can think possible, knowing that young people love to share information about themselves.

I think it is a brilliant idea and never before have I seen anything that has engaged so many of the young population; these videos are spreading like wildfire.

A lot of brands could do well studying this campaign and learning from it. Provide a structure to allow youth to play in, make them feel special and allow them to customise and tag something onto a current trend.

And just for a treat here are my two little ladies strutting their stuff:

Freya in the mood for dancing

Bronte and pal – Valerie

Adopt an MP

If we move it away from all the flash marketing for the moment there is a political campaign that is quietly doing a great job.

Adopt an MP is as simple as it sounds. They aim to get 650 young people from every constituency in the UK to adopt their local MP and track them as they try to make climate change their top priority.

Every month they send trackers an action to be completed over the next few weeks with enough time to write about it online. The monthly actions are simple and achievable and the collective impact is huge.

This is a political campaign that clearly understands how youth works and how to use their creativity and cockiness for good.

And while we are on politics, take a look at the house project and how they get the message on sexually transmitted diseases out to youth:

“Over a number of weeks, Kent County Council and its partners took over abandoned high street shops, kitted them out to look like houses, and then let the young people wander in, play on the dance machine, sit on the sofa, hang out with their friends, take part in music workshops, and if they want, and only if they want, strike up conversations with various folk from the PCT, listen in on talks about alcohol or drugs, and sign up for sexual health tests.

“House worked because it was ‘their’ space. The young people felt ownership of it. There were no uniforms. No NHS signage. No rubbish posters. It was a neutral space.

If you look at all these they all have one thing really in common and that is that the adults created the structure and then got out of the way and allowed the youth to take over. They clearly knew what conversation they were part of and created the platform to allow youth to get into action.

Most importantly – and often missed – is that each of these campaigns had an online and offline element.

Sarah Newton is an enthusiastic and passionate thought leader on all subjects that involve and revolve around youth and society. From her experience as a police officer in London to her controversial work with open family parenting, Sarah has an opinion about most things and is not afraid to speak up for what she thinks is right. Sarah has appeared on over 13 TV stations, 60 different radio stations and has received extensive newspaper and magazine coverage, with full-page features on her work in the Independent, the Times, the Sunday Express, the Mirror and the Telegraph.