The internet represents a tremendous opportunity for brands looking to engage with young adults, Synovate’s groundbreaking Young Adults Revealed study shows. However, to succeed in engaging with this generation, marketers will have to abandon several of their preconceptions about youth audiences.
Interest in and engagement with brands and products emerges as a constant theme in the research, which was developed in partnership with Microsoft and involved online interviews with over 12,000 respondents in 26 countries. Branded and product-related content was clicked-on, viewed, sought out, uploaded and commented on at regular intervals, and emerges as a key element in young adult lives, both on and offline.
Over a third of young adults watch online advertising or marketing clips, with a similar proportion watching clips demonstrating or reviewing products. Just under a quarter (24 per cent) regularly upload both types of clips to social networking and video sites, whilst product information and links are frequently forwarded by 76 per cent of respondents.
This appetite for brand engagement is further reflected in young adults’ declared response rates to online advertising: 47 per cent had clicked on an online ad within the last month whilst 42 per cent had watched an ad playing before video content.
Young adults’ confidence in the value of their opinions and their ability to influence others emerges as a key characteristic throughout the study, and it is apparent in their brand-related behaviour. Over a quarter (28 per cent) had talked about a product or brand in a forum during the past month. Almost half (49 per cent) had reviewed a product online.
Marketers should be cautious about assuming that brand interest necessarily equals brand advocacy, however. Young adults’ responses in other areas of the survey indicate that they are cautious, pragmatic and occasionally downright cynical when it comes to products and marketing. The vast majority are not the youthful early adopters of marketing myth, preferring to ‘wait and see’ what others make of new products. When discussing the environment, 49 per cent believed brands only ran environmental programmes for PR reasons; those who identified themselves as opinion leaders were particularly sceptical.
The survey also raises question marks over some of the approaches most frequently used to target young people. The free distribution of music over the internet seems to be swiftly diluting the impact of marketing activities built around it. Although they welcome brand activity at festivals and gigs, only 6 per cent of young adults cite going to such gigs as a favourite activity. Overall, spending time with the family is as popular an activity as listening to music.
The idea of the exuberantly forwarded viral brand clip will need some adjustment as well. The study shows a significant difference between the number of young adults watching marketing or advertising clips (over 30 per cent) and those passing them on (less than 10 per cent). Clearly only the best virals can prosper.
When it comes to finding out about brands online, search engines are the first ports of call for 46 per cent of young adults, with 26 per cent turning to favoured sites. Start-up pages and online portals were favoured by 19 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
Young adults may be an elusive and sceptical audience at times, but they are also a pragmatic one, happy to advocate the qualities of brands that they see as credible – and even to incorporate them into their own identities. The fact that just under half had uploaded branded content to Instant Messenger services and social networking sites will be hugely encouraging to marketers.
