Social Media and Advertising

When do we turn over the reins of advertising to the echo boomers?? Many demographers and social scientists have declared that this scrappy, wide-eyed generation is everything from cynical to naive to self-assured and techie. Are these the rascals who should be creating web-based advertising? Afterall, consumer generated messages have been all over ad-space for a long time.

So, consider these tips for marketing to Generation Y (gathered from Sara Malarchy at Associated Content)...."Echo boomers are...cynical, politically savvy, and opinionated, but their opinions are extremely diversified." She argues that Gen Y likes tech stuff, so "anything digital makes your product or company more appealing." Don't use mystery or curiosity, they want information. Their moms were in the workplace, not home with the kids all day, so nostalgia doesn't work. They trust online marketers, but can get taken easily because they trust too much. Answer their questions. Involve them. "...anything that seems new, advanced, and computerized."

So, aren't social media sites the best nesting spaces for such messages? Well, site members avoid them on some sites (MySpace, Facebook) as much as they can. They don't like many listservs that carry banners or other flashing connections. So what about blogs? Hey! Blogs!

Business Week just published a great piece on the realities of blogs....(and although I read BW often, thanks as well to the person who provided a copy of this great piece in yonder mailbox. Hats off to reporters Stephen Baker and Heather Green--who say:

"Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business--including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite."

Assuming that Baker and Green are correct, how can we reach Gen Y readers/viewers through advertising messages. Blogvertising perhaps? What will it look like? How will it sound?

Tequila makes her clothes fall off!

A study recently published in the Journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine has affirmed what many of us already know… Hip Hop and Country artists love to sing and rap about liquor and drugs. Researchers reviewed the lyrics (279 songs total) of the top songs of 2005. They figured out that “Americans aged 15 to 18 listening to 2.4 hours of music daily, hear 84 musical references to substance use a day and more than 30,000 a year.”

75% of hip hop songs tracked in the study contained such references, along with 36% of country songs, 20% of R&B songs, 14% of rock songs and 9% of pop songs - alcohol and marijuana were the most common references found.

Lyrics like "Tequila makes her clothes fall off" and "Breaking down the good weed, rolling the blunt, ghetto pimp tight girls say I'm the man”… were common.

So… should we be concerned…should the industry play a more active role policing lyrical content in contemporary music? Should the FCC put broadcasters on notice and put some teeth on Yale Broadcasting v. FCC 1973?

Blame it on the Bottom Line

And here’s more fodder for the “newspapers suck” conversation …

Guerrilla journalist and rogue columnist Jon Talton shares his 2 cents on the demise of the newspaper industry at

http://roguecolumnist.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/2008/01/whats-really-wr.html

Talton argues that discussions surrounding this topic fail “to focus on the more significant reasons behind the decline in journalism,” which include:

• Creation of monopoly markets and cartels of newspaper ownership
• Consolidation of newspapers into large, publicly held companies
• Reduction in investment in the unique intellectual capital of newspapers: journalism
• Emergence of a conformist agenda
• Collapse of leadership
• Collapse of an unsustainable business model

Talton concludes, “Now the tailspin continues, and the damage to our democracy is hard to overstate. … It almost might make the conspiracy minded think there was a grand plan to keep us dumb.”

[Although the context is different, I couldn’t help but think of Neil Postman…]

Do you agree with Talton’s argument that these bottom-line issues are really why newspapers face so many problems these days? And do you agree with Talton that “the damage to our democracy” because of the weakening newspaper industry “is hard to overstate”?