Catch the Millennials (If You Can)
By Valerie Seckler
In a world where teens and twentysomethings increasingly are in control of their media choices, and partake of them while on the move, fashion marketers face more complex decisions about how best to connect with the age group that spends the most on apparel. Those clothing purchases amount to about $40 billion annually among the Millennial generation's 11- to 28-year-olds, according to NPD Fashionworld.
Further, as rapidly emerging media become more popular, fashion players, particularly those brands targeting Millennials, could devote more of their marketing budgets to emerging media. These media include:
- TV programs, music videos and fashion shows that can be downloaded to computers, video-enabled iPods or portable video game players. New services such as Yahoo Go, most of which is slated to roll out by the end of the first quarter, will enable sharing of digital content across such devices.
- Real-time marketing messages obtained from electronic billboards by pointing a mobile phone at those ads to prompt responses.
- Short segments of TV programs, Web content, commercials and music that can be listened to or viewed on video-enabled mobile phones. For instance, Verizon has plans to launch V Cast Music on Monday, a service that will facilitate music downloads to the mobile phones of as many as 30 million of its subscribers.
"The key is to reach teens and young adults in as many places as possible," advised Amanda Freeman, vice president at trend forecaster The Intelligence Group. "High-fashion designers aren't doing this yet; there's a sense they're above it," Freeman continued. "But these are savvy consumers who need to be reached. It's sort of taking Lucky to the next level."
Fashion minds may change as new technologies increasingly free up youths and young adults to dip into media of their choosing at any time and in almost any setting, whether for the purpose of entertainment, information or making social connections. "Younger consumers tend to be early [users] of new media, and content providers are using those media for distribution of their content," said Brad Adgate, a senior vice president and director of research at media buyer Horizon Media. "There are probably fewer than one million video-enhanced mobile phones, but the content is there, and companies are racing things out."
For example, The MobiTV network ("Live television. Anywhere. Anytime.") is offering programming from 38 TV channels, including Fashion TV, Extreme Sports Mobile, Comedy Time, NBC Mobile, ABC News, ESPN 3G TV and The Shopping Network. As the Millennials move into their own homes, observed Erin Hunter, senior vice president of media and entertainment at comScore Networks, "they are likely to have one phone — and it's likely to be a cell phone."
A mobile phone that provides a camera, music and video, Hunter projected, "soon will become the expectation of the [Millennial] crowd."
There has already been significant demand from teens and twentysomethings, among others, to view replays of TV programs online, via broadband video feeds. MTV Overdrive, launched in April, claimed 11 million downloads of its Video Music Awards within two weeks of its initial air date, although the show's TV ratings were down 22 percent versus 2004, Adgate pointed out. ABC had about three million viewers of its two-hour edited version of Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert, while AOL had about five million viewers of its live, uninterrupted broadband videocast of the event in July. Within two weeks after the Live 8 concert, AOL reported another 3.5 million people had accessed the program.
The Video Music Awards Webcast, available online for one month, offered such extras as celebrity arrivals, parties and interviews. Initial advertisers on MTV Overdrive have included The Gap, Procter & Gamble, Sony Pictures and Microsoft, according to "Media on Demand," a report by Adgate published in November.
Just over half, or 51 percent, of on-demand Internet video users are ages 12 to 34, with the heaviest representation coming from 25- to 34-year-olds, who account for 24 percent of the group, based on data from Arbitron and Edison Media Research, as cited in Adgate's report. (The only age cohort with a greater share of users was 35- to 44-year-olds, among whom 25 percent were Internet video users.) People ages 12 to 17 represented 14 percent of the Internet on-demand viewers, while 18- to 24-year-olds constituted 13 percent.
Overall, 14 percent of the U.S. population, or roughly 41 million people, are on-demand users of Internet video, compared with 10 percent, or about 30 million, who are video-on-demand TV users, and 6 percent, or around 18 million, who use personal video recording devices. By 2010, virtually all of the projected 46.9 million digital cable households are expected to be video-on-demand enabled, a nearly fourfold increase from the 12.5 million with that capability in 2003.
Besides facing the challenge of engaging youths and young adults, who typically view between three and eight screen-based media daily, marketers will need to develop more sophisticated commercial content to hold the group's interest.
One early effort in this regard was made last February by Reebok, which shot five hours of Philadelphia 76ers star Allen Iverson talking about life while shooting pool. Besides 30- and 60-second commercials, Reebok assembled a broadband video commercial in the form of a "mini documentary," Adgate noted, which ran for about 90 seconds. The long-form commercial, available on demand to subscribers to Comcast interactive services in Philadelphia, was a trial run for the RBK brand's "Def on Demand," a video-on-demand program launched nationwide on Nov. 11.
"Def on Demand," an hour-long on-demand program whose content will be changed monthly, was conceived to give consumers "more and longer opportunities to interact with our brand," said Mark Fireman, director of advertising and interactive marketing at Reebok. Thirty-second TV commercials are being aired by Reebok to tell viewers about the brand's on-demand, urban and hip-hop programming, which has also included interviews with Jay-Z and 50 Cent.
Another attempt is on tap from American Apparel. Starting early this year, the retailer plans to announce various items are going on sale in real time, by sending text messages to the mobile phones of shoppers in its stores, said Mathew Swenson, senior fashion media adviser at American Apparel. The fashion brand is also considering highlighting items as they go on sale in real time at its American Apparel Web site.
Digital devices from electronic billboards to shoppers' mobile phones are expected to be used by marketers in a number of other ways to reach people in real time, including offers of digital coupons and announcements of special events. For instance, in December, Time magazine snapped digital photos of passersby in Times Square and relayed those images to a nearby billboard to highlight its "Person of the Year" issue.
Interactive marketing plays such as those created by Reebok and American Apparel can be viral, enabling users to pass them along to friends and family, and can give viewers a chance to register their opinions, while providing marketers with an opportunity to glean information about those people. In one such scenario, marketers can track viewers' searches for on-demand programs, either online or via set-top digital TV boxes, in order to develop profiles of their audiences' tastes, much as Amazon has tracked its users' book purchases so it can recommend titles of likely interest to repeat shoppers.
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