Need to adapt to the new world of tweens

DID you know that close to 80 per cent of all brands purchased by parents - is controlled by their children? You may be surprised to learn that a whopping 67 per cent of all car purchases is also determined by the children of the home - not by the parents. Tweens (8-14 year-olds) are an increasingly powerful and smart consumer group which last year alone spent and influenced an astounding euro1.88 trillion (RM8.59 trillion).

TweenSpeak

Actually almost every aspect of what we have learned about generation tweens has been unforeseen. One of the most surprising findings has been the appearance of what we call TweenSpeak, the first global language ever.

From the BRANDchild study we have learned that close to 20 per cent of all tweens across the globe communicate with other tweens in other countries on a daily basis!

Close to two-thirds of all tweens across the world in fact change their language when either texting or chatting with their friends. One-third state the reason why is because it's more cool. In short what we have learned is that the classic grammar is about to die - at least according to the tweens.

The research from the BRANDchild study shows that grammatically correct sentences in ads, on TV or on the Internet are seen as outdated - according to the tweens. They instead prefer a language reflecting what they are used to when texting with their friends.

And talking about texting, 30 per cent of the world's tween population text each other several times a day - however the most shocking findings from BRANDchild is that close to 15 per cent of all tweens across the globe prefer to communicate with their friends via the Net or mobile phone instead of in person - and this is even if they are sitting just next to them!

According to Gartner research, Malaysia, a country of 27 million people, ranks sixth in the world in total SMS volume generation, behind China, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia and India.

About 50 billion SMSes were generated in Malaysia alone last year, a huge portion of this coming from the younger cross section of the population. Texting has become so popular among Malaysian teenagers and youths. Why is this so?

Handset penetration has touched 97 per cent in the country, which means a huge portion of Malaysia's youngsters own or have regular access to a mobile device. Tweens has landed in Malaysia!

Situation Placement

Tweens is a fascinating audience as this is the first interactive generation ever a generation, which in many ways will reflect future generations, their media preferences, and shopping behaviour, and not to forget relationship with brands.

New ways of communication tools will most likely replace the traditional channels we know today. In fact one-third of all tweens prefer to surf the Internet than to watch TV. Close to 50 per cent of all tweens prefer to play computer games instead of watching TV.

Having these figures in mind it's clear that advertising no longer can survive by just belonging to the TV screen or banner ads. Product placement - or situation placement - is soon going to dominate the primary expositor towards this audience - as this in simple terms will be the only way to reach a audience which in average spend 21/2 hours a day in front of the computer screen playing games across the globe.

Contextual Branding

I call the phenomenon contextual branding - the ability to place the right message, at the right time for the right audience - optimising the value of advertising spends.

Combining this knowledge with the fact that every brand in the future will have to be interactive, will have to reflect a new and slightly revised language - and not to forget - use channels - and product placement methodologies never seen before, this is indeed a very challenging audience to communicate to. However, knowing that this generation represents close to euro2 trillion (RM9.14 trillion) in spend or influence a spend a year - as well as pointing us in a direction indicating how future generations most likely are going to look like - we have no choice but to join the crowd and adapt to the new world of tweens.

The figures quoted in this article are from project BRANDchild - the world's largest study on kids and their relationship with brands on a global scale. The study is conducted by international recognised brand guru Martin Lindstrom in partnership with Millward Brown. Over one year, more than 600 people worked on the study spanning 15 countries taking in 70 cities, which resulted in the book, BRANDchild.