Create The Brand World That Teens Will Seek

At a youth marketing forum held here last week, Alex Kuruvilla, managing director, MTV India, said the level of technological awareness and their thirst for information and quest for discovery in the youth of today has resulted in marketers no longer treating them as passive receivers of information but as seekers and active participants. "After Brazil and the US, India is the third biggest and fastest growing youth market in the world. We try to give our marketers' activities a big dose of the youth gene through the forum," he said.

There is a big market of 30 million hot potentials (affluent urban population in the age group 15-24 years) in Asia for mobile phones, according to Malcolm Hanlon, general manager, Zenith Media and regional media director for Nokia Mobile Phones.

 

China offers the biggest market of around 16 million while India offers a potential of a little less than 2 million people. As percentage of total population, the hot potential is the maximum in Singapore, Australia, Thailand and Taiwan.

"To give a deeper understanding of the youth market and to get a feel of their attitude and style, we conduct the Vox Pop research for demographic and attitudinal information. We track the lifestyles of youth: who they are, where they live, what brands they like, what commercials they like, what phones they aspire for, etc," said Hanlon.

He said that today's youth marketers must build a brand world that teens will seek out and want to enter rather than simply impose the brand on them.

Nokia, for the launch of N3210 created a joint promotion with Sony Music and the focus of the promotion was to allow the user to program his own ring tones.

The reasearch for the N3210campaign was done in India, China, Australia, Singapore and Indonesia.