2009 was a year where marketers went all out to win the hearts of young consumers. Digital media. UGC campaigns. Reality TV shows. Ads on nasi lemak packets. They tried everything! And the year went by just like that, leaving us with the question – what worked?
Some of the campaigns which worked very well involved the young consumers themselves in their campaigns. I was fortunate enough to work with some brands and agencies of some of these campaigns, and will share a few examples with you:
A NEW YEAR, A NEW IDEA
January began with 20 brands, agencies, 30 youth communities, and 400 youth volunteers to produce Malaysia’s Largest Youth Festival, YOUTH’09. But in an age of screen-bound youths… what would get thousands of youth to get off their seats?
To do things differently from last year’s festival, a marketing plan involving incentives for online friend invites, youth community partnerships, and guerilla flyering was rolled out.
The result? A fully youth powered marketing campaign which brought together a crowd of 36,720 youths for 3 days of engagement in PWTC. The crowd of youths didn’t come for Siti or Mawi or Beyonce. The youths came to together for each other. And many of the brands involved in producing the festival were more than happy with the unique, live engagement and interaction with the youths.
Immediately after the festival, some of the brands wanted to use this power in their own youth campaigns…
STUDENT POWERED CAMPAIGNS
One telco decided to involve youths in the marketing of a concert they were sponsoring. They started with an idea for a traditional campus road show for 10 campuses. But once they involved the youths, it became much more than that:
• Advertising on flyers and posters were replaced by student wearing T-shirts.
• Road show promoters were replaced by the coolest kids in the campus.
• Performers were replaced by 80 students team performances vying to win red carpet treatment at the concert.
• The campaign microsite was replaced by an online video contest with 79 entries and 13,902 votes.
For a two week campus activation, the involvement of students themselves made all the difference.
This led my team at Youth Asia to invest 3 months of work to allow more brands, agencies, and campaigns to involve students in their campaigns. We built a network of 50 of the largest campuses, reaching 410,000 students, consisting of a calendar of student events open for sponsorship, a timetable for brands to enter campuses, and a ready network of student ambassadors.
Agencies leapt onto this immediately. One handpicked a few student-organized events (including crazy Halloween parties) as part of an integrated brand campaign.
Co-incidentally, this integrated campaign also had a huge focus on digital. And if a campaign needs to get youth involved, digital is a great place to get started…
YOUTH POWERED ONLINE ENGAGEMENT
One element of this particular campaign was a very popular song. Youths can remix the song via an online mixer, and share it with the world. Different partners were roped in to get the remixer out. Usually, one set of communications would be given to all partners, but not in this case. YouthSays.com was asked to customize the communication and the mechanics of the song remixer to make it engaging for the 180,000 young Malaysians.
And it paid off. In the first 5 days of YouthSays.com promotion, the song had over 2,000 remixes. And by the end of the 2 week promotion, 5,500 remixes were uploaded, accounting for 85% of total remixes received by the total campaign. It helps that YouthSays.com has a community of 180,000 young Malaysians who choose to be involved in projects and campaigns, but you still need the right messaging and incentives.
The same sort of custom messaging and partnership model to get youths involved was replicated for the Youth Engagement Summit 2009.
Sure, the summit brought together icons like the cofounder of Twitter, Garry Kasparov, Donald Trump, Datuk Tony Fernandes, trade ministers from China and India live in KL.
However, the challenge was to bring the voice of the youth of Southeast Asia to the summit as well. We wanted to compile a public report to show these leaders… what change do youths want to see?
So we shot a survey out, giving away a chance to win free trips to the summit in return. My team at Youth Asia contacted 120 partners in Southeast Asia, including the largest universities and online communities. Instead of giving them one message to spread, we worked alongside them, and ran multiple custom campaigns with these partners, targeting different audiences. It was a lot of work, but in the end we collected 105,502 stories in 6 weeks, and produced a report to tell the world
• What change do youths want to see in their personal lives – right now?
• What change do youths want to see in their community and country by 2015?
• What change campaigns of ideas would they support?
If you want a copy of this report, just drop me an email at khailee@youthasia.com. It’s truly inspiring to see youths across the region come together and spread the word to produce a report like this.
All in all, 2009 was a thrilling year for me. When innovative brands and agencies engage youths and partner communities from all over, it reminds me that anything is possible.
WHAT’S NEXT IN 2010
What new campaigns will shape our thoughts? What new moves will change the competitive landscape? Will there be more ads on nasi lemak packs? I can only guess.
As for me, I have my chips on the Malay youth segment. 2010 will see new channels to involve the Malay youth segment. YOUTH’10 is slated for the mid year, to be a youth festival of twice the size and impact. We are now inviting brand partners to shape that experience. We’ve also doubled our team-size to keep up, bringing on brains from both brand and agency to continuously bridge the gap between communities of youths and the brands who seek to engage them.
2009 has taught us a lot about engaging today’s consumers in our marketing, and I look forward to working with brands across industries who believe in powerful ideas to engage the power of young consumers.
Khailee Ng is the Executive Director of Youth Asia.
Youth Asia is a youth powered organization which connects brands, business leaders, governments and the media with youth.
Representing the largest student organizations, youth communities, and influencer networks, Youth Asia also owns its own online opinion and research community, YouthSays.com with a member base of over 240,000 youths in the region.
Youth Asia has led and executed over 250 youth research projects, nationwide marketing campaigns, and the nation’s largest Youth Festivals.
Khailee can be contacted at khailee@youthasia.com