Youngistan ka “WOW”

Pepsi, the flagship brand of PepsiCo had introduced the concept of “Youngistan” a couple of years ago. Its current campaign of “Youngistan ka WOW” featuring Ranbhir Kapoor builds on the same youthful spirit. It attempts to show that youth is audacious and lets things happen in their own way.

Youth Traits are much talked about today especially in the marketing world of telecom, two-wheelers, fast moving consumer goods and lifestyle products. Men and women in the age group of 20 to 30 years is their target audience.

A brand is considered to be dying sooner or later if it cannot capture attention of the youth.
It is one such segment that is ready to experiment, try new products, take risks and also have money in their pockets along with willingness to spend.

According to National Council of Applied Economic Research (Dec 2009), 37.9 per cent of 1.2 billion Indian population falls under youth category (age group of 13 to 35) and out of them 72.8 per cent are literate. Quite interesting figures! A huge market potential!

Market research and advertising agencies are all busy these days studying the psychographic profile of this young Indian.
They believe that today’s youth are

Individulastic

Iimpatient
Networked
Novelty Seeker
Value Conscious
Realistic

A company like Bharti Airtel has assigned mentors to the senior executives of the BroadBand Services to understand what young people want and how they live. Yes, those mentors are young 25-year-old employees of Airtel itself…! The executives including the chiefs & heads spend time with their respective mentors to understand how perceptions can be mapped through blogosphere, what is F1 Racing and the networked world of youth.

A company like Levis has its marketing executives in the age group of 28 to 30 years and believes in keeping their company culture young & fresh. Recently, it tied up with banks to offer denims on installment. When Apple launched ipod, it added a slot in their denims to keep the machine.

About 80 percent of customers of Virgin Mobile are below the age of 30. Youth spend about Rs. 500 per month on mobile phones which is more than the national average. Social networking sits like Facebook & Twitter show how networked the young generation is.
Electronic media is getting more popular than the print media. Companies are releasing their ads on You Tube as soon as they are released on television.

Dabur, an FMCG brand realized, a few years ago that its market was above 50 years and that set alarm bells ringing for it. After an extensive market research, it realized that age group of 30 years is heath conscious and gets engaged with the ayurvedic and health products but find them very unimaginative and boring. It was then, that Dabur repositioned itself after giving its logo and packaging a new contemporary look and connecting with the youth. It took on board Mahendra Singh Dhoni as its brand ambassador along with Amitabh Bachchan.

Althhough celebrities like John Abrahim, Ranbhir Kapoor, Genelia D’Souza establish a strong connect with the youth, there are brands like FastTrack that have managed to strike a chord with their customers despite not using celebrities. They believe “There is also an opportunity to be a brand that can be a mentor.”

“Why Play Akele?” was another quirky, bold and on-the-face campaign by social networking site Ibibio.com to entice the youth. It believes that the young audience understands quirky and edgy, and they don’t like straight talk.

So, we find that most of the companies around are speaking the language of youth today…!
It is Youngistan ka wow!
Guys & Gals, its our time to rock the world!