Tip #7: Expect only partial attention.
The Naturals pose a real dilemma for marketers because they assume the right to be heard, to blog, to tweet, to tell the world what they are thinking (or even just tweet that they are feeling bored) but they are not prepared to really pay full attention.
“The rest of us should assume they live in a state of constant partial attention,” says King whose approach to marketing to Naturals centres around looking for the value that the product/service can provide to The Naturals’ connected lives.
“Rather than trying to work out ways to force a message into their daily regime, as a marketer, you should ask ‘what do I have to offer my intended audience?’ It could be new types of functionality, utility, entertainment or socialisation – but it’s probably not a tagline,” he says.
Tip #8: Don’t even think about censorship.
The real joy of a site like Trip Advisor is just how frank the community is. It now has a storehouse of more than 30 million traveller reviews and opinions. The authenticity of the information shines through. So empowered do its users feel that they will post photos of dirty sinks and rusty taps and scrutinise every aspect of their travel experience. Hoteliers and other travel operators do have right of reply these days on the site which all adds to the value of the site.
Smart travel operators are accepting the fact that feedback is never going to be 100% and that this is a reality of social networking sites. Vogue magazine in Australia has recently received bad press after its editor Kirstie Clements revealed that it removes negative information about its advertisers when it surfaces in the thriving Vogue forums.
“If you start pruning the negative, they will start pulling out of the site,” says McCrindle.
“You have to relinquish control, it is about user-generated content.”
King recommends playing anthropologist, look around and dive into these digital worlds for ideas on how to connect to these consumers. His firm The Royals has a blog on interesting new trends (see here).
Forget about Facebook as the number-one place to watch The Naturals.
“It’s so 35-plus,” says McCrindle. “When a brand gets big it is perceived as being too big and uncool and they go back to subterranean brands,” he says. The average user of most of social networking sites is positively middle-aged.
The average Twitter user is 39 years old, which perfectly corresponds to news this week in the Herald Sun of 40-year-old cricketer Shane Warne’s new love of Twitter. Warne, it seems, has switched from texts to tweets. Perhaps his new nickname should be the Sheik of Tweet?
Bebo is the current favorite social networking site with younger generations, with 50% of its users aged under 24, compared with Facebook’s less than 25% under 24.
Tip #10: Remember, The Naturals just can’t stop being connected.
The hit reality program ‘I’m with Rolling Stone‘ charts the journey of a pool of young interns fighting to get a job at Rolling Stone magazine. There is not a single frame of the show where an intern is not touching at least one piece of technology, a phone, an iPod or a laptop: gaming, texting, tweeting. It looks like they are physically addicted to technology.
Walsh has observed this too and is carefully watching the emergence of internet addiction clinics. They have sprung up in Chinese cities where broadband is freely available and citizens’ passion for online gaming is out of control.
In the US, one internet rehab clinic reStart in Washington has a 45-day, $17,500, 12-step program. In South Korea, the government is going to distribute free software to help people limit their online time. The software makes the system shutdown after an agreed timeframe. With The Naturals spending an average of more than seven hours of screen time per day, it will be interesting to see how Australia handles this very real way of life. Says Walsh: “This is only the very beginning of the story.”
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