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by Michele Erskine
Strategy Magazine
Dec 17, 2003
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The good news is that teen "screen
time" is up by a full day a week, writes SRG's Michele Erskine.
The bad news is that if you want them to watch, you can forget about
the other demos.
Change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same.
Embrace these core truths and you're on your way to realizing that,
when it comes to reaching youth, things aren't as difficult as many
marketers believe.
First of all there's that nasty trend of declining television viewing
among youth. This is true, but it isn't bad. It's not bad because while
TV viewing is down, total "screen time" is up - by a lot.
People have always - and will always - want to be entertained. Youth
may not be spending as much time "watching TV" in the traditional
sense, but if you expand the measurement of "time spent viewing"
to include time viewing DVDs, videos, computer screens and videogames,
then you actually see an increase in the amount of "time spent
viewing" by youth.
Specifically, according to industry media measurement sources, teen
TV viewing has dropped by around four hours per week over the past decade
to a current level of approximately 13 hours per week. Figures tracked
in Solutions Research Group's syndicated study, In the Name of Cool,
show teens in February 2003 spending 1.9 hours per day (13.3 hours per
week) viewing TV.
However, teens are also spending 0.8 hours with DVDs/video, two hours
with Internet and one hour playing video games each day, according to
SRG's February 2003 In the Name of Cool study. Taken cumulatively, that's
a total of 5.7 hours per day or 39.9 hours per week spent viewing screens.
So rather than dropping four hours per week of TV viewing, instead they
appear to have added the equivalent of a full day per week of viewing
time, based on the expanded definition.
Granted, this is cold comfort if you happen to be a broadcaster, but
this problem of a shrinking slice of a growing pie is one broadcasters
share with many other youth-involved industries: jeans, soft drinks,
snack foods, running shoes, and makeup, to name a few.
In each of these industries, the heritage brands are battling it out
with an exploding number of competitors.
If you find yourself in that situation, what can you do?
First face some hard decisions. Do you really want to be a youth brand?
If so, are you willing to reinvent yourself so that you're specifically
relevant to youth? Are you willing to give up your adult market in exchange?
Can you provide a separate brand for the teens and devote the heritage
brand to its adult consumer base?
These aren't choices that had to be made as recently as 10 years ago,
but today it's very difficult to serve both adults and youth, and this
may be particularly true in broadcast.
Why? Because these days, we're not all sitting down to watch the family
TV set together. Canadian households with teens have an average of three
TVs, 93% have at least one computer, 81% have a video game console and
65% have a DVD player (Source: In
the Name of Cool, Feb. 2003).
With these options available in their home, do you really think teens
are going to opt to watch a show they aren't interested in so that they
can spend time with their folks?
And before you start blaming this on an overly self-indulgent group
of teenagers, remember one more core truth: children are the product
of their environment.
Youth are growing up with choice, the ability to access specialized
content and a facility with technology that empowers them to do so.
As they age, they're unlikely to decide that they prefer stations with
programming that isn't relevant to them and an ambiguous brand identity.
They'll look for clearly branded stations that provide consistent programming
in keeping with a particular niche of interest to them. Brand clarity
is a critical asset in grabbing consumers within a highly fragmented
landscape. Today's teens know the importance of brands and we can expect
the generation coming up right behind them to continue to navigate this
way.
For marketers, this means that we're moving into a period in which TV
stations and networks will, or should, continue to transform themselves
from just program vehicles into branded entities. We already have some
excellent examples of well-branded specialty channels: Discovery, TSN,
TLC, Prime, W, A&E, MTV and MuchMusic, and newcomers such as Lonestar
and Scream.
The period of massive ratings may be over (with a few notable exceptions,
such as Star Académie), but what we're getting instead is a period
in which a marketer can truly work with a branded station to build communication
strategies that leverage the relationship that the station has built
with a loyal audience of viewers.
These viewers are easier to profile because they share common traits
that make them easier to relate to. And that relationship will extend
beyond the box with an opportunity for interactive communications via
companion Internet sites, electronic newsletters, and who knows what
else. The possibilities will only increase as technology continues to
provide new ways to entertain, inform and communicate.
Now that's not really bad news is it?
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