When I conducted the BrandChild research, one of the results which took me most by surprise was the number of channels kids are able to handle at the same time. Where adults are able to manage 1.7 media channels at the same time — say, watching TV and reading a magazine — kids can give attention to an astounding 5.4 channels at the same time. When I repeated the study three years on, not only had the number of channels kids handled at once increased by 0.2, but adult capacity for dealing with multiple channels had increased by close to 0.1.
It seems, therefore, that the ever-evolving media environment is not influencing only the younger generation. It is affecting us all and we are all adapting to it.
Welcome to the MSP — ‘me selling proposition’ — generation. This is a generation which takes on personal ownership of its favoured brands, turning the power relationship between consumers and corporations on its head.
Rather than brands being in control of the consumer’s power of choice, consumers demand their own input, even customisation, in products.
You can see this MSP reflected in, for example, concepts such as Build-A-Bear or The American Girl Place, which enable kids to design their own toys, down to every last detail. Kids, present and future consumers, are suddenly in control of their own brands. So, in the future, brands will need to give their audiences the power to design their own products. If they don’t manage to adapt to this power shift, ‘generation tomorrow’, with the highest expectations of customisation — online, offline and wireless — will be lost to them.
I recently received a commercial in my inbox for a brand of energy drink I’d never encountered before: Kfee. In making presentations and speeches all over the world, I learned that at least 25 per cent of my audiences in the 20 countries I’ve visited have also seen the ad. Recently-released information estimates 45 million people have seen the Kfee ad.
The production budget for this massive exposure? Roughly US$10,000. And the key to this success is this: Kfee is a product that fits perfectly with the MSP generation. Why? Because the MSP generation is also a generation of broadcasters. These kids are at once recipients and transmitters of the brand message. They send it on. That means they’re doing the marketing for the brand.
So, these days, every brand needs to trigger broadcast responses in recipients. Of course, this can be a gamble. If you win, you win big time. If you lose — if the MSP generation discards your approach — too bad. A fact of future branding life is that playing with the confident, self-aware, critical and canny MSP generation can be risky.
In tackling this crowd, you have to live on the edge. It’s essential that you take chances to meet the ultimate objective of having your brand stand out.
Martin Lindstrom is the author of Brand Sense
