Ephebiphobia

Nielsen’s latest report “How Teens Use Media” aims to rid the marketing world of ephebiphobia, the irrational fear of youth, debunking the myth that teens are wildly different to other consumers.
The report challenges the popular assumptions about teens, showing that although they may be wildly different to their counterparts of generations past, they are not that different in their media use to other consumers.

A couple of things that stood out for me:

• Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S. Furthermore 92% of teen viewing was live TV.
• Teens love the Internet…but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online—far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes. Not surprising when you consider teens spend much of their day in the classroom.
• Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25–34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.
• The average US teen sends/receives 96 text messages EVERY DAY! This is up 566% in just 2 years. With this increase in mobile usage it’s not surprising that 62% of US mobile teens say that their parents have placed at least one restriction on their mobile use.
• It’s a myth that teens consume media 10 screens at a time. In reality 77% of the time teens are consuming media they are using just one at a time compared to 69% for adults.
  

Read the entire report HERE.

87 Cool Things

Google Creative Lab have put together a great presentation of well, 87 cool things from the internet. The list consists of:

1. Stuff they like
2. Stuff that's probably worth knowing about
   
3. Stuff they made
   

A really good summary of all that's cool from the web. Check it out HERE.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Hats off to whoever managed to sell these ads to the client. The jury may still be out but I think they’re brilliant. They show a real understanding of consumer mentality; treating real-world stores as showrooms, then finding the lowest price online.
It’s refreshing to see a brand being honest about their strengths and those of their competitors. As I posted about previously in Reviewing Is The New Advertising, with the advent of the iPhone and the Android, for the first time ever, on-the-spot price comparison in the ‘real world’ is now possible. Customers won’t even need to leave John Lewis/Harrods/Selfridges to compare the price with online stores, they'll just use apps such as Shopsavvy.

Cultural Insights

A couple of great infographics to share this week that give a good insight into how behaviour and culture change over time.
First up is What Britain Eats, which brings to life three decades of grocery shopping in the UK, illustrating how what we eat has changed over time. The interactive tool allows you to search by the five main food types and then see how consumption of that food group has changed.

Secondly is The Evolution of The Household: 1950 to Today, which looks at various aspects of household life in the US and explores how they have changed over the last half century. More of a photo essay than an infographic, it shows things such as:

• Average home size has more than doubled since the 50s
• Pounds of chicken consumed eaten has almost trebled since the 60s.
• The total time spent watching TV per household per day has increased by 82% since the 50s. Even in the last decade TV watching has increased by 57 minutes.
• The number of TV channels available in the average home today is more than 6 times that available in the 1980s.
  

Whilst not all the figures are comparable for each decade it’s still an interesting read. See the full infographic HERE. Original article from Woman’s Day (a must read for all planners...)

A Planner's Dream

If you want to know the answer to such life questions as which moonwalk is better (Neil Armstrong’s or Michael Jackson’s) you should check out this blog. But for everything else, the new Google Internet Stats is a good place to start. The site collates stats on a range of topics from macroeconomic trends to consumer trends.

You Really Should Watch This

The latest edition of the Did You Know? series has just been released and as usual it's full of thought-provoking statistics. Developed in partnership with the Economist, this year’s theme focuses on media convergence.
For all the sources check out their wiki.

What's Hot This Week #7

Neurosonics – awesome new video featuring the scratch perverts.
MTV Sticky – the revamp of the MTV Sticky site has finally happened and it looks pretty nice. Check it out for all things “youth culture, trends and insight”.
Animoto – bored of sharing your photos as a slideshow on Picassa? Then head over to Animoto which creates a “movie trailer for your pictures”. Simply upload your photos and choose your music and Animoto does the rest.
goPostal – my new favourite iphone app allows you to send photos on your iphone as postcards. Simply choose a photo, write your message and choose the person you want to send it to from the address book. The postcard is then printed and delivered for a mere $1.29. Hope it comes to the UK soon.
Art & Copy – new film about advertising from director Doug Pray that explores “the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time - people who've profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry.”
Physical vs. Digital – great infographic that shows our increased ability to store data whether it’s music or photos. For example did you know that every hour the equivalent of 384 albums of photos are uploaded onto Flickr?
Twitter & Young People – according to the latest data form comScore the view that young people don’t Tweet may soon be about to change. Their data shows that younger users are the sites fastest growing audience segment.
DHL – really nice bit of print work for DHL that demonstrates the speed and reliability of the service through an innovative use of print.
History of Flight – beautiful website from Nike in the style of a pop-up book.

The Cares of a Generation

With over 50,000 people already signed up Vinspired are doing some good work at changing the image of volunteering in the UK.
They’ve also got a data visualisation arm called Voicebox that curates young people’s opinions on a range of subjects. What I really like is they then present the data in creative ways that allows you to explore the results by age, gender, region and ethnicity.
Their latest project called Voicebot aims to create a direct channel between young people and MPs. 16-25 year olds are being asked to submit 160 characters on what they care about and the best submissions will then be physically written out by a robot inside Parliament in October. No doubt they’ll then collate all the submissions and do something fancy with the results.

It reminds be of Nike’s Chalkbot idea from earlier this year.

Hat Tip to threebillion

Reviewing Is The New Advertising

Reviewing is the new advertising according to the latest briefing from TrendWatching.com. The report examines the shift in consumers’ decision making processes to a powerful peer-to-peer model and provides a look at what’s new, happening, upcoming and important in the era of transparency. There’s a lot of interesting examples in the report and plenty of sites to use to garner consumer opinions on your brands.
A small selection lifted from the report:

• Shopsavvy, an Android app, allows the user to scan almost any barcode using the phone’s camera, and it will then search over 20,000 online and local retailers to find the best price. Once the best deal has been found, users can either purchase online, or use the phone’s built-in Google Maps feature to find their way to the store.
• SnapTell is owned by Amazon.com, who last month also released its own, free, Android mobile application, which allows users to take photos of an item on their phone, or scan a barcode, and then have Amazon search for the same product online, enabling immediate comparison with the physical-retail price. If the price is right, users can purchase the item securely from their mobile device.
• Local review site Yelp boasts the first iPhone app with augmented reality. Users can put their iPhone camera in front of a restaurant, with Yelp’s reviews then overlaying their real-world views.
• Fixya is a popular post-sale tech support site, where 15 million members help each other with product support questions on 1 million products. It has now added product recommendations to its website.
  

Read the full report HERE.

Buy Your Street

The new global campaign from Hasbro aims to turn the whole world into a giant game of Monopoly. They’ve teamed up with Google to produce a huge online version of the game that allows you to buy, sell, and develop property on any street in the world. The game launches on 9th September and will last for four months. Look forward to seeing how they use Google Maps and Google Earth to make it all possible.

Via PSFK

City Life

As Pete Heskett said in the fantastic Advice to the Next-Generation Planner:

“The planner of the future will need to be more Global not just in experience but in outlook and orientation…. We will travel more, we’ll consume more culture from outside of our home countries, and we’ll all become less ‘national’ and more ‘cosmopolitan’. Planners will need to make sure their ideas are more cosmopolitan and will need to focus not just on the difference of brands but how they can connect to the similarities in people across cultures.”

I use the internet an awful lot to pick up culture from outside the UK from sites such as Le Cool, PSFK, Spring Wise and Cool Hunting to name a few. I recently came across a new site called City One Minutes that gives you a peak into life in more than 100 cities around the world via one-minute videos.
Each city is divided into 24 one minute videos representing each hour of the day. You can search by city, time of day and month in which the video was shot.
Well worth having a browse through some of the videos for cultural and behavioural differences and similarites between various cities.

Ad of The Week

It’s not quite the end of the week but I don’t think this spot for Jay Z’s new album "The Blueprint 3" is going to be beaten.

What Happens In Vegas Stays On Facebook

Nice video on social media.
I particularly like the thought that “successful companies in social media are more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy”.



UPDATE
Looks like some of the stats on this video aren’t that reliable.
Lesson of the day: Don’t trust stats just because they’re from an expert.
Thanks to Robert Cole for doing what I should have done and checking the reliability of the “facts”. The sources for the stats in the video can be found HERE and Robert's interrogation of them HERE.
For redemption here are my top 5 sources for social media stats:

WHAT THE F**K IS SOCIAL MEDIA one year later – great presentation by Marta Kagan.
Universal McCann’s Social Media Tracker Wave 3 and Wave 4 – comprehensive worldwide study of social media.
When Did We Start Trusting Strangers? – another great bit of work from Universal
McCann looking at how the internet has turned is all into influencers.
Pew Internet – US based but lots of interesting research.
Digital Stats – great blog regularly updated with interesting stats about digital media.