The Grid. It just sounds badass. Nike’s gaming the world in whole new and more literal ways. They have worked with the venerable data modeling group Stamen to turn London into a board game. Stamen leverages teams (such boys vs. girls), old phone booths, real time visualizations, and badges to create FourSquare on crack with a hint of Halo. You must dial into the phone booth a la The Matrix to score. And the catch is you must RUN. Which is also the hidden purpose: get more runners. Wishing I was living in London. Might actually get me to run.
Read more…
Kids these days… they adopt new tastes and tech apps as easily as they ink a new tattoo. Along with deciding which friends to follow, they also face the same harsh economic challenges as the rest of us (though social media may give them an edge).
If you’re already focused on youth culture, you know the challenge of keeping up. If you don’t think that youth is your target, you may want to reconsider. Read Cheskin Added Value’s latest Fresh Perspectives newsletter on Youth Culture and find out why.
Kids these days… they adopt new tastes and tech apps as easily as they ink a new tattoo. Along with deciding which friends to follow, they also face the same harsh economic challenges as the rest of us (though social media may give them an edge).
If you’re already focused on youth culture, you know the challenge of keeping up. If you don’t think that youth is your target, you may want to reconsider. Read our latest Fresh Perspectives newsletter on Youth Culture and find out why.
The New York Times recently ran an article about how certain companies, like Burger King, have begun consolidating their agencies (essentially eliminating their multicultural agencies). The author, Stuart Elliott, notes that this move is “indicative of a trend that has accelerated as younger consumers, who are often less likely to use traditional labels of race and ethnicity, have become more of a force in the consumer marketplace.”
Read more…
We do lots of work with youth at Cheskin Added Value, and much of it focuses on youth trends. We are repeatedly bemused by “trendspotters” who breathlessly promote the “next big thing” that they saw the “cool kids” doing. Surprisingly, we’ve seen that a lot over the years, and it seems to keep repeating, as different companies come and go, each claiming to understand the mysterious lives of teens.
Teens can appear hard to understand from an adult perspective, but teens, like any subculture, can be easily understood once you dispel some common myths, and apply some useful frameworks. Let’s look at a few of each…
Read more…
Thirty-thousand text messages. This is the number of messages 16 year-old Melissa recently revealed to me that she had sent from her mobile phone the previous month. Let’s do some quick math: that’s approximately 1,000 texts every day. Assuming she sleeps 8 hours a day that leaves 16 hours of texting time, or about one text a minute every single day. Yikes!
Read more…
Teen unemployment is up (26%). Teen spending is down. Household net worth is down – by 20% , the lowest since post-WWII – and 40% of jobless adults believe that they are beginning to see behavior change among their children because of their situation. With drastic cuts in education impacting arts, sports and culture and the stimulus money draining from the 1 billion set aside specifically for youth employment, the near future for teens is not looking bright. Is there a silver lining – anywhere?
Read more…
Clients and colleagues have been sharing a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, “The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born,” that looks at differences in cell phone and internet usage between US born and foreign born Hispanics. While the report is methodologically sound and provides invaluable information, I did not find the results as surprising or shocking as other readers.
Read more…
“There were three little kids, around 11 years old, just staring at me as I got on the plane,” my fiancée said as I picked her up at the airport. “It was crazy, they just stared at me the whole way down the aisle. Then I realized they were looking at my Silly Bandz.” My hand immediately slapped my forehead as I realize my fiancée was wearing bracelets meant to feed the crazed collecting appetites of 11 year olds. Apparently the mere glimpse of Silly Bandz was like blood in the water for the kids on the plane. Come to find out, they were quite the hit at my fiancée’s bachelorette party – clearly a wild event.
Read more…
The New York Times ran an article over the weekend asking whether Facebook is a utility or not. While Facebook is fun, I don’t think that it’s important enough to qualify as a utility. But I do think that its low ratings on the American Customer Satisfaction Index suggest that Facebook is vulnerable, and does not have the power or lock-in that many believe that it does. Here’s why:
Read more…
