Newsletter #106 Marketing To SuperConnectors

Created on 11/07/06

A special hello to all new subscribers. This article is on the Web at this address.

Our last newsletter (9th April, 2006) was "Super Net Companies".

It’s fairly obvious that today’s teenagers have grown up in a totally different communications environment to the one you were raised in – unless you are a teenager of course! A research report by Energy BBDO, an American branding agency, has found 56% of 13-18 year olds to be what they have called “SuperConnectors”. In a worldwide study they found that these teens are:

1. Highly adaptable to emerging technologies
2. They are creative and like to develop their own content
3. Highly resistant to traditional advertising messages
4. Using multiple mean of connectivity at any one time
5. Conducting social networks over the Web and other enabled devices

This group is merely the latest example of the way that the digital explosion of the last decade of the 20th and early 21st century has changed the way we receive and impart information. These teens provide the best look at what happens when people grow up in an environment where they are always connected.

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Also these teens are just a subset of all young people who are far more at home with digital technologies than their parents and elders. In 2001 American Marc Prensky distinguished between “digital natives”; those who have grown up with digital technologies, and “digital immigrants”; those who have adapted to the digital environment to various degrees. Digital immigrants are typically baby boomers and older who use digital technologies less, in completely different ways, and don’t always fully understand the technology’s capabilities.

OK, you may say, but what has that got to do with my business? Well even though you may not necessarily need to sell to SuperConnectors or digital natives now, you will in the future. Also the technological landscape continues to evolve very rapidly changing the way that products and services are marketed to all demographic groups.

This is what I think the marketing trends are for today’s business:

1. Fewer people will have loyalty to particular publications and what loyalty there is will not necessarily be to traditional publications like newspapers, magazines and broadcast television.
   
   
2. Successful marketing of products and services to consumers will require you to engage the target audience, not present static advertising.
   
   
3. And following on from this, consumers want to develop their own content rather than passively consume what has been developed for them. Witness the growth of blogs, podcasts and the rise of online video. If you can provide consumers an opportunity to creatively use your content, you’ll be on to a marketing winner.
   
   
4. Advertising will become more contextual, tied to content not to networks or a particular publication. The idea of sitting through advertising, then back to content, will be old hat in five or 10 years time.

If you can learn how to talk to the digital natives of today your business will have a successful future.

If you don’t, you’ll suffer as today’s natives become tomorrow’s competitors and leaders.

Newbies

If you want to view your desktop, that is minimise all windows, there are two easy ways to do so using your keyboard. On the bottom row of your keyboard is a button that has the Windows icon on it - that's the Windows button. If you press and hold this and then press D you will minimise all windows, if you press M it will minimise all normal windows but not dialog boxes. A summary:

"Windows"+"D" - minimises all windows
"Windows"+"M" - minimises all normal windows

Power Users

Replacing the Show Desktop icon that appears in the Quick Launch toolbar. This icon can be a really useful one but can easily be deleted by mistake. To reinstate it open Notepad and copy this code into it:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

Choose File/Save As and go to Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch. Save the file as
Show Desktop.scf
and click "Save". Note that if you are the only user on the computer go to your profile folder rather than the "All Users" folder above.

The Internet Archive has a huge range of historical collections of items in digital format. The Archive includes snapshots of the World Wide Web, software, classic movies and audio recordings. http://www.archive.org/

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." Gertrude Stein

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

To access previous newsletters visit our newsletter archive.

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

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