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Trend Watch: How Chatter Matters in TV Viewing

A new study from cable in­dustry as­so­ci­ation CTAM – and con­duc­ted by Nielsen – looks at how we talk about tele­vi­sion, what we talk about, when and with whom this chat­ter takes place, and how this dia­logue in­flu­ences TV en­gage­ment and tune-in be­ha­vi­or.

Infographic: Chatter Matters When Watching TV

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Mobile Youth: Graham Brown on the Voices of a Mobile Generation

Good Question: How Much Time Do Kids Spend Watching TV?

Mobile Youth: Graham Brown on the Voices of a Mobile Generation

Graham D. Brown, an internationally recognized expert on mobile technology, wants you to know that just about everything you think you know about about kids, mobile phones and technology is wrong.

No really.

In his new book, Mobile Youth: Voices of Mobile Generation, Graham brings years of expertise working in the communications and youth marketing space, coupled with interviews with youth from around the world, into a compelling exploration of how the mobile youth culture revolution is driving our increasingly social and mobile future.

It's Not About Technology, It's About Relationships

While news outlets run stories warning parents of the dangers of teen ‘internet addiction’, social media and texting, (most often during ‘sweeps week’ to garner eyeballs and advertising dollars) Graham takes a more nuanced, balanced and global look at the behaviors and sociological drivers behind these mobile trends.

The book contains several case studies of how youth---from Beijing, Tokyo, L.A. and even Amish Country in rural Pennsylvania---use mobile phones as a way to connect with their families, teachers and, most importantly, their peers.

As Brown points out, the most important thing any brand, marketing campaign or youth-focused organization can do is help consumers connect with their peers. The most successful brands, whether it’s a mobile tech firm like Samsung, a food truck in Los Angeles or social media company like Twitter, provide consumers with a way to connect with each other, which in turn creates value, relevance and stickiness for your product.

And this is the real secret sauce behind of why mobile devices have become our most valuable possessions. In the end for today’s youth, it’s about using technology (mobile, social) to connect people to their friends, passions and community.

Simply stated, the emotional connection they have with their mobile phone isn’t so much about technology, it’s about relationships.

Kids and Technology: Same Behavior, Different Tools

The other important lesson, this time for parents and educators, is to take a step back and release that teen behavior hasn’t changed from when they were kids, just the tools and technology.

Think of it this way: twenty years ago, teens hung out at the mall to share ‘status updates’, stalk and make friends and, occasionally, get into trouble. And don’t forget the hours upon hours that were spent talking on the phone (the one with the curly cord) and watching TV.

These youth behaviors still happen, but now the mall is out and Facebook is in. Hours on the phone tied to the wall has been placed with SMS, KIK and Twitter. Wasting time watching TV is out and wasting time watching Hulu and YouTube is in.

Mobile Youth: Voices of Mobile Generation is a must read for anyone--youth marketers, parents, educators, youth pastors--wanting to garner a better and deeper understanding of the emotional relationship between young people and their mobile phones.

About Graham D. Brown

• Since witnessing the growth of youth media and technology having lived in Japan in the early 90s, Graham, along with business partner Josh Dhaliwal has helped grow mobileYouth to serve over 250 clients in 60 countries worldwide - names such as Vodafone, Nokia, Coke, McDonald's, Telenor, Red Bull, Nike, Monster Energy, Orange, O2, Verizon, Boost Mobile, the UK government and the European Commission.

• Graham is a regular public speaker and has presented at the 3GSM World Congress, Barcelona and been interviewed on CNN, CNBC, BBC TV and Radio. His work has also featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Guardian. 

• He is author, Director and Founder, mobileYouth and Chairman & Founder of The Youth Marketing Academy. Business author & speaker on the psychology of communication and media. 

• Graham also hosts the youth marketing stream on Upstart Radio and mobileYouth's own TV channel. Graham is also a judge on the Mobile Marketing Association's Award Panel, advisory board member to UNICEF on their mobile media strategies and an advisor to the Global Youth Marketing Forum in India.

• Follow Graham on Twitter: https://twitter.com/grahamdbrown

• Graham Brown is the author of the the annual "mobileYouth" report, Youth Marketing Handbook, Youth Marketing 101, All is Social and the Influence Guide. 

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All Eyes East: Mary Bergstrom on Chinese Youth, Technlology & Social Networking

The rise of China as a world power has been well documented and is nothing short of amazing.

While most people focus their attention and analysis on the political and economic changes taking place in China, very few have taken a look at the generation driving this economic transformation.

Enter Mary Bergstrom, principal of The Bergstrom Group, an insights consultancy that helps companies to leverage trends, develop new products and localize international brands for the Chinese consumer market.

China's youth population is composed of 500 million under the age of 30 and is poised to play an even bigger role in shaping the global economy and impacting youth culture.

The 'new China' is being shaped by a generation that loves exploring new identities online, playing video games and staying connected via social networks. A generation who, at times, also struggles to reconcile the generational values of 'new China' with those held by their parents and grandparents.

Sound familiar?

In her new book, All Eyes East: Lessons From The Front Lines of Marketing to China's Youth, Mary shares her many years of experience and insight studying Chinese youth culture and helping some of the largest companies in the world connect with Chinese youth consumers.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of All Eyes East, looked at the way Chinese youth use technology, online communities and social networking.

In many ways Chinese youth use of technology mirrors the experience of youth around the world. But as Mary points out, there are some very interesting and uniquely Chinese uses of technology.

Some of the key insights on Chinese youth, technology & virtual communities:

• BlogCN, launched in 2002, became the first free blog service that allowed Chinese youth with a risk-free platform to explore new identities

• Blogging and social networking has allowed Chinese youth to challenge notions about sex, gender and socially acceptable behaviors

• In China, anonymity has led to safe and highly creative collaboration among youth. One key example of this is a meme sparked by Xiao Pang who had his identity borrowed and then reincarnated online where it sparked millions of clicks

• In the 90s, Chinese youth developed a new cyber Martian language that allowed them to  self-select who is 'in' and who is 'out'

• Young Chinese mothers aren't waiting for a product to define or help them manage motherhood. Instead these digitally savvy moms are networking online, protesting brands that abuse their trust and forming parenting groups on social networking site QQ

• It is very popular and common for Chinese youth to create profiles on different social networking sites based on pursing specific interests and testing new identities

• Renren, a popular social networking site, allows couples to create and manage profiles, allowing them to present themselves with others as a team

• Popular poses for profile photos include: two fingers n a "V" gesture, puckering for a kiss and making a heart with their hands. Doing so helps Chinese girls distinguish themselves from the singularity of the masses

Mary has compiled an impressive and unprecedented body of research on doing business in China, its burgeoning youth culture and has provided companies and organizations who want to reach this influential market with a clear roadmap to success.

All Eyes East is a must read for anyone--CEOs, corporate marketing teams and MBA students alike--who wants to do business in China.

Related

• Blog > Bergstrom Group
• Twitter > @Mary Bergstrom
• Twitter > @Bergstrom Group

How Texting Can Save Teen Lives

When Nancy Lublin, CEO of the teen social change organization DoSomething.org, started texting teenagers to help with her social advocacy organization, what she found was shocking -- they started texting back about their own problems, from bullying to depression to abuse.

Last year, Nancy and DoSomething.org started using text messaging to market these campaigns. They text over 250,000 teens a week. And have found texting to be 11x more effective than email.

DoSomething.org is a charity that runs national campaigns impacting causes teens care about. For example, Teens for Jeans collected more than 1mil pairs of jeans for homeless youth. Give a Spit registered 15,000 new donors for the bone marrow registry--and has already saved 8 lives!

Her new project is a text-only crisis line, and the results might be even more important than she expected.

Take 5 minutes and watch this video. It will literally change the way you look at texting.

 

Here's How To Help

As a startup subsidiary of DoSomething.org, Nancy and her team be able to leverage both the technological ability and experience from DoSomething.org to help launch the Crisis Text Line.

The Crisis Text Line will use text messaging to connect teens with support and resources. The goal is to create a national (and ultimately international) infrastructure to ensure that teens can use SMS to get help 24/7.

By donating to this project, you will help that teen who is being bullied and feels they have no where to go. You will help the teen who is being sexually abused at home or the teen who has struggled with depression and is feeling suicidal. Your dollars could literally save lives.

Right now Crisis Text Line is crowdsourcing donations on Indiegogo. They are trying to raise funds to get the first phase of the project off the ground.

Please donate. $5, $25 or whatever you can to this cause. It doesn't matter how much. It just matters that YOU do something to help teens in crisis.

Global Youth: How Russian Parents View and Capitalize on Digital Media

Have you ever wondered what technology do Russian kids use and when? How parents in Russia view the digital media impact on the child’s development? What role does media play for shared parent-child activity? And how all of this vary with different incomes and city sizes?

Digital trend consultancy Anketki Research has released a new study that looks to answer some of these questions (and more) as well as the current state of rapidly expanded digital media practices among Russian families.

The report provides a wealth of information, stats, facts and insight, associated with children, their parents, Internet and digital devices in Russia. The study was prepared on the basis of the initial survey conducted in March, 2012.

Digital Parenting Russia

Key Insights

• Searching the internet has become the most popular shared activity for high-school children

• Russian fathers show more enthusiasm with digital media usage for children as opposed to Russian mothers, whom prefer traditional media (TV, books, spoken word, music, etc).

• E-books, mobile apps and online games are more frequently used and popular among male parents, who show heightened enthusiasm with digital potential and childhood development.

• Currently, 30 million of Russian inhabitants are under age 19. For every one child in Russia there are 3 adults.

• More than half of all women have only one child. Almost third of the woman have 2 kids. And 9% doesn’t have kids at all.

New Marvel Avengers Comic Teaches Kids Financial Literacy

Marvel Comics and Visa have teamed up to create a new, one-of-a-kind financial literacy comic book titled Avengers: Saving The Day.

 The free 16-page comic book, available in print and online at www.practicalmoneyskills.com/avengers, mixes Marvel characters, including the Avengers, Spider-Man and Iron Man among others, with Visa's financial literacy expertise, to introduce kids to basic money concepts.

The heroes team up to defeat the villain Mole Man and his evil army, all the while learning important financial skills. The action-packed comic features a budgeting worksheet, finance terms and more. There's even a free lesson plan on financial literacy for teachers.

The comic book is being released around the world and is available in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.  

Avengers: Saving The Day was created by Marvel storytellers, including veteran writer James Asmus (Generation Hope), and was designed by Andrea Di Vito (Avengers Academy).

Trend Watch: Speaking the Language and Ministering to the Next Generation

 

Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and the American Life Project, recently spoke at the annual conference of the National Religious Broadcasters.

 This talk will focus on the media habits of Millennials and GenX and how their patterns of gathering and creating information are different in the digital age. 

Speaking the language of the next generation

View more presentations from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Related: Faith, Religion, Community & Gen Y

Trend Watch: Welcome to Social Entertainment

 

Three trends are having a key impact in how consumers are using the internet: the rise of the 'packaged internet', with access through apps rather than browsers; an explosion of professional content and real-time social all contributing to what GlobalWebIndex founder Tom Smith sees as the rise of the social entertainment age.

 According to Smith, 'The open browser-based internet has failed to create the economics to deliver professional media business online, as advertising could not demand the premiums needed and consumers are unwilling to pay for content delivered through a browser.'

GlobalWebIndex's free report analyses the current situation and considers the implications for professional media, content producers and brands.

Welcome to Social Entertainment - Annual Report 2011

View more presentations from Tom Smith

Real-time social

The report identifies that a shift is currently taking place from blogs and forums to real-time sharing such as status updates and tweets, with 10% of internet users around the world updating their status daily. 'This radically changes the impact of social media, primarily creating an ongoing shared agenda and conversation towards reacting or interacting with live events and discourse.'

The rise of the packaged-internet

Mobile apps, tablets, e-readers, internet-connected TVs and gaming / video platforms are all contributing to the deterioration of the internet as a single entity. Mobile, in particular, has contributed to social entertainment, with over 17% of people surveyed having watched TV in the last month via their mobile, and 26% had watched an on-demand video via mobile phone.

Professional content explosion

The fastest growing motivations for using the internet identified by the survey were 'finding TV / films', 'finding music' and 'entertainment'. The survey also found that the prime motivation for 16-24 year olds to engage with brands is to entertain them (66%). GlobalWebIndex interprets this as a 'clear indication of the need for brands to adopt the position of content creator'. (via)

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Infographic: Youth, Digital Trends & Social Networking in China

View Large | www.gplus.com

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Trend Watch: LEGO, Girls and the Color Pink

Almost immediately after the iconic Danish toy company announced that they would create a line of LEGO building blocks geared especially for girls, the outcry began.

Here's a round-up of some of the coverage.

Lego is for Girls: Focusing on boys saved the toymaker in 2005. Now the company is launching Lego Friends for “the other 50 percent of the world’s children.” Will girls buy in? [Business Week]

Lego Friends: Please Build on Possibility, Brain Plasicity: No one’s trying to thwart Lego’s growth to build onward…We’d just like to refrain from mopping up the mess of mass marketing landing on girls as stereotyped limitations instead of a gateway for girls to build lands of their own. [Shaping Youth]

Lego Targets Girls with PInk Blocks, Cute Figures and No Creativity: There's nothing gendered about the most basic sets, which just contain colored blocks in different sizes, yet Lego is considered a toy for boys.

Now after extensive research, the company is releasing a new line to woo girls, but the way they're going about it may give you the urge to kick over your brother's Tatooine playset. [Jezabel]

 

VIDEO: Lego's Billion Dollar Girl [Business Weekly]

What do you think? Are LEGO Friends sexist? Are people overreacting? What's your take?

Trend Watch: Twitter, Facebook and Social TV

Twitter Embraces Its Social Role in TV: Like so many other things that the Twitter community has established on its own (hashtags and retweets, for example), the company is now fully embracing the role it plays in supplementing the TV-watching experience of millions of people. [RRW]

Social Media and TV - Who's Talking, When and What About? : Social media continues to influence how consumers interact with brands and share content every day. Increasingly, TV viewers leverage social media as a platform to talk about and engage with TV content.

These conversations are not only opening new channels for consumer engagement with their favorite TV shows and fellow fans alike, but also are providing insight into which viewers are driving the conversations and when. [Nielson Wire]

Yahoo's IntoNow Provides Signs of Life for The Premier Digital Media Company: Yahoo! is known for acquiring startups and letting them languish. But IntoNow cranked out a whole new product--and a possible game-changer for the TV industry--in six months. Is this the beginning of something new? [Fast Company] Get the free IntoNow App on iTunes

MTV Exec: Social is a New Programming Platform: Many people are talking about how TV networks can leverage the power of social networks to help build their show audiences. But they may be missing the point. According to Dermot McCormack, EVP of Digital Media for MTV, social networks aren’t just for announcing when the next episode of Jersey Shore airs, but a whole new platform for media creation and distribution. [GigOM]

TV Isn't What it Used to Be: According to a recent Ypulse report, only 28% of students say they can’t live without TV (referring to traditional viewing), compared to 83% who can’t imagine life without music. Some students even prefer streaming video to traditional TV viewing; after all, it gives them what they want when they want it. What’s a TV company to do? [MediaPost]

In the U.S., Tablets are TV Buddies: The Nielsen Company​’s most recent research on mobile connected devices sheds new light on how consumers are using their tablets, eReaders and smartphones – and where they are using them, too. [Nielson Wire]

Multask Mania | Viewers Watch TV, Discuss on Social Sites: Almost 40% of TV viewers are discussing TV shows on social media sites, with almost three-quarters of TV viewers with broadband access, generally using the Internet at same time, per U.K.-based Ovum, a business/technology research firm. [MediaPost]

What's the Future of Social TV Look Like?: Real-time entertainment is what people are looking for–we always want something fresh to keep us up to date.  But with this demand for real-time entertainment, how has it affected traditional TV? [Silicon Angle]

The Future of TV, From Apple to ZeeBox: “The future of TV” has become a buzzword over the last few years – but what if it was time to stop talking about it and acknowledge that the future has already arrived? [TNW]

Barking Robot > Category > Social TV

Infographic: How Mobile Phones Shape the Lives of College Students

Created by: HackCollege

Trend Watch: YouTube Beats out Facebook as Top Youth Social Media Brand

A new Harris poll says that YouTube is the top social media brand among America's youth.

The video site beat Facebook as Social Media Brand of the Year in the 13- to 24-year-old age range, according to the 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study.

In terms of YouTube’s popularity, other studies have shown that more than 2 billion videos are played every day on the vide-sharing site and that YouTube mobile receives more than 100 million views daily.

The study sought to benchmark the brands that America’s youth prefers by evaluating familiarity, quality, and purchase consideration. More than 5,000 Americans, ages eight to 24, took part in the study. [Via PR Daily]

Related: YouTube Pictures Teachers and Students Using More Video in the Classroom

DoSomething.org Wants Youth to 'Give a Spit About Cancer'

Leukemia kills more children each year than any other disease, but YOU can do something about it.

Click here to find out more about DoSomething.org's "Give A Spit About Cancer" campaign. Learn how you can start a donor drive at your school and how to sign up to swab your cheek and you could save a life.

That's it. Painless, easy, simple.

Here are some quick facts about leukemia and young people:

• Leukemia kills more children each year than any other disease.

• Young people age 18-24 are the bone marrow donors needed most.

• Only 30% of patients needing a marrow transplant can find a match within their family. The rest rely on complete strangers.

• Currently, the likelihood of finding a matching donor is 66 to 93 percent, depending on race or ethnicity. Minority donors are most needed.

• Donating marrow isn’t as scary as it sounds — and there are 2 ways to give, one that’s much like giving blood but takes a bit longer.

 

Mike Schmid Wants Kids to 'Let it Out' [INTERVIEW]

Earlier this week my interview with musician Mike Schmid was published on Ypulse.com!

Mike is a talented singer-songwriter and highly sought-after musician who has worked with some of the biggest acts in the music business.  

In addition to playing keyboards and touring with Miley Cyrus, Mike has played with the Jonas Brothers, Billy Ray Cyrus, Sheryl Crow, Kenna, Chantal Kreviazuk, Ed King, Jeffrey Steele, Van Hunt, Aly & AJ and the Corrs as well as many independent singer/songwriters, such as Connie Kim, Right the Stars and Rob Giles.

His songs have been featured on the TV shows “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Flashpoint,” “The Real World,” “All My Children,” “The Bad Girls Club,” “Felicity,” “The Black Donnellys” and others.

His new album, ‘Let it Out’ is all about expressing yourself in every possible way: dancing, dreaming, painting, singing. The album is for the kids (and kids-at-heart). It is about being yourself in every situation, a message that is resonant to children and adults alike.

• You can read the entire interview, Mike Schmid On Miley, Fame, Twitter, And Music For Kids, over on Ypulse.

• You can buy his new album for kids, 'Let it Out' on Bandcamp, CD Baby, Amazon MP3 Store and, of course, iTunes.

• Mike on Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and his website.