Derek E. Baird, M.Ed.

The Gen Z Frequency: Book Release Day

Today my book ‘The GenZ Frequency’, co-written with Gregg L. Witt, was officially published in the UK and the rest of the world by Kogan Page! The book will be published in the US on September 28th!

‪If I’ve learned anything during the process of writing this book, it’s that Gen Z is going to change the world.‬ Thank you to all the young people who were willing to talk to me during the writing of this book and helping me to tune into the Gen Z frequency. ‬

'The Gen Z Frequency' offers a comprehensive youth marketing guide for any brand or organization trying to reach this demographic, covering fundamental truths, content creation, connecting with youth culture, engagement strategies and tactics such as social media, experiential, emerging technologies (like AR and VR), kids privacy law, building online communities, edtech and much more.

Available on Amazon, iBooks and KoganPage

Trend Watch: Augmented Reality Apps for Education

Last summer, millions of kids discovered the power of Augmented Reality (AR) while using apps like PokemonGo, Snapchat and Instagram.

In light of these socio-cultural changes, educators need to “keep abreast of change” and embrace curriculum design which integrates the authentic ways that students use AR in their “out of school” experiences as a tool that connects them with peers and content as a means to achieve, both short and long term, learning goals.

Like other technologies, AR has the potential to be a powerful tool that support the personalized learning goals of students by bringing scannable content to life in an engaging and cost effective manner.

For a generation that’s been raised on interactive technologies, bringing AR into the classroom and curriculum can also help encourage active engagement and contribute to student retention.

Read the entire post on VR Pop on Medium.

Meet the Tweens of Gen Z

What sets Gen Z apart is an unrelenting relationship with information and technology, and their early independence, born of impatience and the confidence to act. These are the identifying traits of what will be the largest demographic in history.

And yet, their confidence and knowledge often out pace experience...which causes tension between an advanced intellect, and the reality of their actual age and emotional intelligence.

At the epicenter of this tension we find tweens—a complex subset of Gen Z. They are caught up in the turbulent transition from simply being a kid, to fending off the intricate pressures of teenage existence. They are the pivotal middle-ground of Gen Z.  

Tweens pose an interesting dilemma. Kids (5–8) are still largely influenced by and accessed through their parents.

Teens (14–18) are rapidly forming their own opinions and establishing independence from parents, and there are direct channels to reach them.

Tweens (9–13), on the contrary, are the hardest to reach, even while they are actively seeking cues and learning to form opinions. 

Because they are the least accessible, and arguably the most open to influence, tweens are an important puzzle to solve for companies marketing to Gen Z.

Gen Z is set to influence nearly $600 billion dollars of family spending and will comprise 40% of consumers by 2020. To succeed in marketing to this unique segment, any brand that wants in, has to be willing to play by their rules.

My colleague, Gregg Witt and I have co-authored a new book for Motivate Youth.

In this guide, you will learn key insights, strategies, and tactics your company can deploy to improve tween marketing efforts. You can download a copy of Meet the Tweens of Gen Z over on Scribd.

 

"Instagram Together" Showcases Mental Health

Instagram has launched an initiative called "Instagram Together" to showcase their continued commitment to developing tools that address bullying, mental health, and other topics impacting tweens, teens and young adults.

Teens and young adults are increasingly turning to social media platforms, like Instagram, to talk about their mental health struggles, so this is a much needed and welcome program.

As part of the Instagram Together campaign, several influential members of the community are showcased, sharing stories of how they use the Instagram ecosystem and hashtags (like #ItsOkayToTalk) to share their mental health journey with others to build (or find) a network of support.

Instagram is #HereForYou

As part of Mental Health Awareness month, Instagram announced a hashtag campaign called #HereForYou, which highlights how the social network has helped support its community members struggling with mental health issues.

 

Reporting Self-Harm on Instagram

Members of the community can also anonymously report others who they feel may be in need of mental health support.

The Self Harm Reporting feature allows users to report a mental health concern to Instagram and send the user a message with mental health resources in their country.  

These resources also display when someone visits a hashtag for a sensitive topic, like hashtags associated with self-harm, eating disorders, and suicide. 

This feature is very similar to the Facebook feature that allows people to report expressions of self-harm.

It's great to see Instagram taking active steps towards creating and fostering a safer, kinder experience by addressing the mental health, safety and well-being of their community. 

 

Related: How Texting Can Save Teen Lives

 

• If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Inc. Magazine Names Immersive Youth A Top Youth Marketing Blog

Our Immersive Youth team got some exciting news! Inc. Magazine has named us one of the Top Youth Marketing Blogs to watch in 2016! Needless to say, we are pretty excited to be in such great company with other digital youth firms like Ypulse and YouthBeat! 

The Inc article cites our Gen Z and Millennial Youthvine platform as a key differentiator from other digital youth agencies:

"What sets the company apart is Youthvine, its proprietary online community. Youthvine is a forum driven by young administrators.

It is coordinated to allow owners to communicate with next ­generation buyers. IYM's agency establishes the relationships, but Youthvine creates a unique experience to engage the new age."

Thanks to Dave Kerpen and Inc for including us on this list! And check out some of our work for a few of our clients, like Walt Disney World, Disney Yellow Shoes Creative Group and Funny or Die! And if you have a Gen Z or Millennial project you need help with, give us a shout out!

Trend Watch: Utah Valley University Creates “Texting Lane” for Students

A Winning Strategy for Instagram Marketing

Flashstock has put together a really good snapshot of how brands can use Instagram as part of a winning social marketing plan! It's definitely worth a read.

A Winning Strategy for Instagram Marketing by Derek E. Baird

Piper Jaffray: Instagram is the Top Social Network for Teens

According to the latest Piper Jaffray "Taking Stock with Teens" report, American youth are continuing to gravitate to Instagram and away from Facebook. 

Roughly three-quarters of respondents reported using the visual platform, up from 69% in the previous survey. By comparison, just 45% said they use Facebook, a significant drop from 72%.

Jaffray Piper also reports that friends and the Internet dominate teen influences and combine in social media environments. Instagram and Twitter are the two most used social media sites, implying teens are increasingly visual and sound bite communicators.

The Taking Stock With Teens survey is a semi-annual research project comprised of gathering input from approximately 7,200 teens with an average age of 16.0 years.

Teen spending patterns, fashion trends, and brand and media preferences were assessed through visits to a geographically diverse subset of high schools across 11 states and 14 schools, as well as an online survey that included 41 states. 

Piper Jaffray has also prepared an infographic that shows some of the key highlights from the Fall 2014 survey.

Taking Stock with Teens Fall 2014

Trend Watch: Tenth Grade Tech Trends

I ran across this really interesting essay over on Medium by Josh Miller, who interviewed his sister on the latest tech and social media trends at her high school.

Josh's findings dovetail with what I've heard in my own interviews with tweens and teens on the hows and why's of their social media habits.   

Take a peek into the mind of a teenager on social media to learn what's in (spoiler, not Facebook) and what's hot (rhymes with snap and cat).

Tenth Grade Tech Trends

Meet the Millennial Makers [INFOGRAPHIC]

In a recent MTV study entitled “Generation Innovation,” we set off to look at the resiliency of a Millennial generation that is pushing back against a system in need of repair… whether the economy, the environment, the education system and more.

What we found was counter to the often-charged caricature of today’s youth as “entitled” and “coddled.” Instead, we found a vibrant and strong fixer/maker/builder culture where nearly 3 in 4 of Millennials believe “our generation is starting a movement to change old, outdated systems.”

Put more broadly, if the American Dream isn’t working as promised, Millennials will take it upon themselves to iterate the next “version” of America.The heady mix of forces driving this generation is only partly due to their sense of needing to fix something broken.

The other even more potent side of the coin is the primacy they place on their own power of creativity. When asked “what word best defines the DNA of your generation?” the number one response was “Creative” and number two “Self-expressive.” A full 70% of Millennials in the study agreed “Creativity will save us!”

One of the first places we checked in on our journey was Detroit. We were fascinated by the “canary in the coal mine” dynamics at work with a younger generation busy appropriating, fixing and remixing the American Dream – whether transforming abandoned factories into hack spaces, disused cycle tracks into playgrounds, distressed storefronts into galleries for emerging artists or untangling arcane local government departments.

Millennials have the motivation and DNA to run wild with innovation, but they also have access to the tools, technologies and platforms to make a real difference. In fact, 92% of Millennials feel “empowered” by technology (versus just 11% feeling overwhelmed by it).

What the generation is busy fixing and making is interesting to watch, for sure. But perhaps most fascinating is HOW Millennials are going about innovation and what we can all learn from it about what form the next version of the American Dream may take.

Read the entire report over on the MTV Insight Research blog:

Why Snapchat Is The Future of Social Media [VIDEO]

In his new video, fimmaker Casey Neistat makes the case for Snapchat being the future of social media, but in a fundamentally different way.

It's not like Facebook or MySpace, his argument goes, though it may be their natural evolutionary successor.

Snapchat is different, Neistat (and the gaggle of Snapchat teens he interviews) says, because it actually mirrors the way we interact in the real world.

"Snapchat is great because it's virile and vital. Because it's right now. Because there's no pressure to be produced or fake, because everything disappears in a few seconds anyway."  -David Pierce, The Verge

Snapchat is a way to let people live your life with you, a surprisingly close approximation of just running into someone for a few seconds at the store or on the subway platform. Neistat points particularly to Snapchat Stories, the public-facing part of Snapchat, as the feature that made Snapchat really move into the mainstream.

 

 

To illustrate the power of Snapchat, Neistat invites Jerome Jarre, the King of Snapchat with 1.2 million follwers, to send a Snap his fans asking them to meet him in Union Square----16 minutes later Jarre racked up 142,000 views on his Snap and several hundred screaming fans actually showed up in person.

Read more on The Verge

Snapchat Social Safety Guide for Parents and Educators [PRIVACY]

Few things strike fear in parents and educators as much as Snapchat. It wasn't too long ago that social technologies like MySpace, Facebook, SMS and camerphones had the power to elicit such a negative response.

But slowly, as parents and educators began to learn more about these new tools and social technologies, they not only embraced them, but many educators began integrating them into their teaching practice.

The Snapchat team has put together a wonderful guide to help parents and educators learn more about the app and help demystify some of the rumors. It's a good starting point to learn more about the app, which is becoming more and more mainstream every day.

The guide also talks about the SnapKidz--the totally private and secure version of Snapchat designed for kids under the age of 13. Snapkidz is a fun way for tweens to privately share photos of camp, that trip to Disneyland or family vaycay with their friends, cousins and even grandma! 

For educators, this guide is a great opportunity to have a discussion with your colleagues in a professional development setting to learn more about Snapchat and how students in your school are using this tool. Who knows, you might even find yourself using the "Our Story" feature to document that field trip!

Happy Snapchatting!


Snapchat Social Safety Guide for Parents & Educators

STUDY: 59% of 8-14 Year Olds with Smartphone Use Chat Apps

New research from UK-based digital marketing platform SuperAwesome, which currently houses the largest kids research panel in the region, maps out a compelling crop of comparative digital kids data from 2009 to 2014. 

The survey contains lots of really interesting stats on kids gaming, social networking and mobile habits, but one of the most interesting statistics comes from the data regarding chat apps. Back in 2009, MSN dominated, but now kids have shifted their loyalty to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

So while kids may not be using Facebook, they are using Facebook products (FB Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) as primary social networking and communication tools. It looks like the great unbundling of Facebook strategy may pay off and keep younger users in the Facebook mobile ecosystem. And mobile ad network. (Shock! Awe!)

The other big take away is the shift from passive consumption of media to an active embrace of maker culture. Kids are creating movies and publishing them on YouTube, creating worlds in MineCraft and embracing LEGO more than ever.

While this data is primarily focused on kids in the UK, I would garner that data from U.S. kids would closely align with the SuperAwesome findings. 

Kids Trends: 2009 vs 2014

SnapBrand: How To Leverage SnapChat to Market to Millennials [INFOGRAPHIC]

Once the private domain of teens, SnapChat has moved into the mainstream with several large companies using SnapChat to appeal to younger demographic.

Some of the companies currently utilizing SnapChat as a marketing platform, include: Acura, DoSomething.org, Juicy Couture, Taco Bell and even Lena Dunhum's hit show Girls has joined Snapchat.

It's not clear at this point what the conversation rate is or if teens will resent that corporate America has co-opted their parent free zone with ads (like all the "old people" that took over Facebook!), but it will be interesting to see how this develops.

 

Via Marketo Blog

Related articles

Millennials Explain the Appeal of Snapchat

McDonald's Teams Up with Snapchat

6 Ways Nonprofits Can Use SnapChat

How To Leverage Snapchat To Reach And Market To Younger Audiences - infographic

Trend Watch: TeenFacefeed

Part SnapChat. Part Chatroulette. Part Secret. A dash of Instagram. Teens are going gaga for Facefeed. 

"This isn't OkCupid or Tinder. This is trying to replicate how you would meet someone at a party. 

You see faces of people (no name, no background info), and you can say 'hi' with a smile to anyone you feel looks interesting."

There's no profile to set up. Facefeed doesn't link with any of your social accounts. You just log in, take a selfie, and put it out there in the world.

If someone thinks your selfie looks nice, that person can write you a message. If you want to reply, you can. If you don't, you can block that person forever.

And if you become friends with that person, you can add them to a friends list, so you can write to each other as often as you'd like."

Read more at Business Insider

 

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