Three Questions For Mr. Youth

Posted by anastasia

I remember being at Current TV and brainstorming around how to set up a campus rep program to get the word out. It seemed like a no-brainer, but I now realize there's actually a lot of thinking and planning needed to launch an effective program. I think Current ended up working with Mr. Youth's RepNation if I'm not mistaken. As a part of Mr. Youth's founding sponsorship of the first ever Ypulse College Mashup, we offered them the opportunity to do a short Q&A for the blog, giving them some more publicity and hopefully giving you a bit of insight into how they approach what they do.

Ypulse: What do you consider to be key when thinking about reaching college students?

Mr. Youth The best tactic for delivering a powerful message to students is being localized and relevant. Approaching the college student audience as a monolithic one will result in noise that won't resonate on campus. Secondly, your campaign must create news: the barometer for the excitement you create should be the media. If they don't care about it, a college student consumer won't either.

YP: How do today's college students differ in their media consumption habits? What should any brand trying to reach this demographic have in their media plan?

MY: College students consume media on their schedule in ways conducive to their lifestyle. Traditional media remains at the forefront of daily media consumption, but rising adoption of new technologies (TiVo, iPods, Satellite Radio) no longer make traditional media effective on its own. A strong promotional campaign seeded with a big idea is the best way to approach the college market. If this strategy is in place, the choice of mediums becomes almost secondary.

YP: What makes a college rep program successful vs. not successful?

MY: A college rep program is successful when measurable campaign metrics are set and able to be accurately measured throughout. This puts accountability on the reps and the agency and allows the client to truly gauge the success of these programs. Secondly, solid campus rep initiatives embrace multiple mediums, including guerilla marketing, social media, interactive promotion, and PR.

Photo by Patricia Hudak (from L to R): Matt Britton/Mr. Youth, Alli Decker/Ypulse Books, and me at the Ypulse College Mashup opening reception.

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Ypulse Interview: Neil Costa, CollegeWeek Live

Posted by anastasia

As you can read on my Facebook status (btw my husband thinks I'm such a geek for updating that), I'm still "decompressing" from last week's Ypulse College Mashup. We just put all of the photos up on Flickr (still finishing up captions). We also have a couple of presentations from the event:

SurveyU's opening slides
SurveyU's interstitial stats
CollegeWeek Live's overview
Ricky van Veen's keynote

As part of our sponsorship package, we offer the opportunity for the sponsor to be interviewed on Ypulse. What follows is my interview with Neil Costa, the VP of biz dev at CollegeWeekLive -- they create a virtual college fair for high school students. If you really want to look at how tech has transformed the lives of teens, just look at the college application process. Gone are the days of applying to a mere five schools (safety, reach and a couple in between). Gone are the days of typing your app. and using lots of liquid paper. There are virtual tours, online resources for test prep and financial aid, oh and Facebook as a way to get the real deal on student life.

Ypulse: In a few sentences, explain why CollegeWeekLive is needed...

Neil Costa: CollegeWeekLive has a different benefit for each of the constituencies we serve:

1. From the student perspective, CollegeWeekLive makes it easier to research schools and make a "connection" with the admissions teams.

2. From the perspective of colleges, CollegeWeekLive is a source for generating additional applications from across the country who may never have considered their college.

3. From the perspective of marketers, it is an opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience who are in the process of planning for college and all the supplemental decisions which go along with that big move.

YP: Technology has changed the college process in so many ways -- from test prep to the online common application. What do you think has been the most profound change in this process?

NC: We believe the most profound change in the college process is access to information. This of course has been made available through technological growth in the past 10 years. Students are able to access more and more information online and manage more and more of the process through online channels. CollegeWeekLive is a great example of this trend. At CollegeWeekLive, students are able to access information but they are also able to interact directly with administration officers and current students. This helps to breakdown geographic barriers and demystify more schools than they previously had available to them.

YP: What are today's college bound teens the most stressed about when it comes to college?

NC: They are stressed about not only getting into school, but getting into the "right" school. Many feel an added pressure from their parents and schools to get into a high caliber institution. College prep starts as early as elementary school with students being "groomed" toward getting into "the right college". That being said, college bound teens are more stressed than ever before, in fact studies show that the numbers of students who feel overwhelmed and stressed have doubled since 1985 (NYU Child Study Center (2005). Consider that more Americans are going to college than ever before and there are more first generation college students are going to college than ever before. CollegeWeekLive hopes to break down some of the stress by letting students communicate in a way they prefer -- online. Also, students can interact with admissions officials in a "1-to-1," private fashion without having the pressure of discussing their GPA and SAT scores in front of their peers at a crowded, physical college fair.

YP: What are some of the more innovative and interesting ways you have seen some schools leverage technology to reach this new generation of college students?

NC: We have seen colleges & universities just start to innovate using technology in their recruitment process. To be honest, the innovative schools are way ahead by having their own chats, hosting students blogs, providing great virtual tours and now jumping in and participating in CollegeWeekLive. There is really a long way to go for many colleges to catch up and modernize their sites and tools available to prospective students. We here more and more about "stealth applicants" -- those whose first contact with the college is the application -- and college websites & resources will need to be great for the students who decide to take this unique approach.

YP: At the same time, with everything becoming more automated, are some colleges are working harder to offer a more "human" touch?

NC: The Human touch is a huge part of this process and one that should not be overlooked. We see colleges who are hesitant drop physical events to adopt technology and automation because of a fear of losing that human touch. All the while, they know using the Internet is part of the college search process and it is here to stay. The colleges that learn how to leverage technology while incorporating the human touch are the ones that will rise to the top. This is why services like CollegeWeekLive are so important. They can leverage technology like video chat where they can interact with students using progressive technology while still being able look have a human element.

YP: Anything else you think Ypulse readers should know about?

NC: Live online events offer users and marketers a new option on the Internet and our users spent 68 minutes on the site over the two day event so we think we are on to something pretty cool. We also offer all of our video content on-demand. We are fortunate to have some great traction in this space and offer brands this new, interesting type of online advertising option.

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Ypulse College Mashup Recap Part Two

Posted by anastasia

This is the second half of Andrea Zak's recap of last week's event...

The N-Word: Narcissism

Gen Y is frequently perceived as a narcissistic bunch, demanding praise for the most mundane workplace tasks. Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, asked, "What's the change in the culture. . .it's not like the ideas came out of nowhere. . .Young people have been told since they were very small do what's right for you....you shouldn't care what other people think." Lofty goals and expectations are so overblown that rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health measurements are on the rise. (As an aside, it's worth checking out Christine Hassler's 20-Some, 20-Everything for an overview of what she dubs "expectation hangovers.")

Narcissism is not a new trend. Twenge noted that the while 80s promoted materialism, MTV's My Super Sweet 16 is "beyond entitlement." Parents avoid saying "no," in an effort to be a friend, rather than an authority figure. (Think Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.) Nor is narcissism limited to American youth. Her peers in China report a disinterest in politics and a focus on having a good time. In India more and more teens talk about wanting to be famous.

This tendency towards self-absorption is affecting media consumption. Lee Brenner, Director of IMPACT at MySpace commented that, "Young people want to know about hard news, but more so how it will affect their daily lives. They have enough reading to do with their college; they just want to get to news that may affect them." Yahoo!'s Front Page Programming Director concurs that "this audience wants to see itself" and seeks to profile and feature individuals that Yahoo users can identify with, like the "fashion blogger who said never wear mom jeans."

A caveat: though youth wants to see the stories reflected through the lens of an equal, they don't want bombarded with puff pieces. Newsweek's Editorial Director of College Projects Samantha Henig noted that while "ad people wants more sex, drugs, rock and roll. . .those are the things that turn off the college students. . .[they say] 'We're not stupid, we don't want to read about sexual exploits, we want to read what's important.'" Gen Y is also engaged in election season and uploaded questions in record numbers for the CNN/YouTube debates. In the same vein, Meghanna, a college student on the final panel, commented that a Huckabee ad featuring Chuck Norris "undermined our intelligence."

Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of this post.

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Ypulse College Mashup Recap Part One

Posted by anastasia

We had an amazing event in Santa Monica last week -- the room was packed, the schedule was packed and people were making connections left and right. I left the heavy lifting of recapping the essence of what we learned to our volunteer blogger Andrea Zak. Before I post her highlights, here are a few of my own.

- Realizing that mtvU is way cooler than the flagship station. Why can't they smarten up what they're doing for teens?

- Learning that Rafat Ali, founder of Content Next, is also a hard core Friday Night Lights Fan. Also learning that while we were having our opening reception, there was a FNL event happening at the same time (L.A. Times, reg. required). If only I could have been in two places at once...

- Awkward moment: The New School panel talking about the decline of MySpace with MySpace IMPACT's Lee Brenner just smiling politely in the audience, and then later reminding us that they're still number one!

- I didn't realize that January 31st was the anniversary of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston bomb scare. CN's Dennis Adamovich gracefully responded to a question on this (there's the need for disruptive marketing to reach this audience...and then there's just disruptive - my words, not his). Later, Ricky van Veen shows a really funny spoof of the whole incident.

- The college student on our panel who proudly claimed Live Journal as her favorite website (she's a blogger) when every one else said Yahoo! or Google (fyi: They were all into customizing these pages).

- Jean Twenge makes people defensive. I think there's truth to a lot of what she says, but people get very defensive when she makes her case. I don't think any generation is all good or all bad, it's all very nuanced. Since most of the rest of the event skewed very positive, I thought, it was helpful to have her perspective.

And now the real recap from Andrea...

The Ypulse College Mashup addressed the lifestyle and marketing needs of the 18.2 million college students that fall within Generation Y. SurveyU Co-Founder Dan Coates presented some statistics, which emphasized the need to understand the best ways of targeting this group. Generation Y (aka Digital Millennials) is the first American generation to top 100 million members (Comparison point: there are 76 million Baby Boomers). With half of all high school graduates enrolling in college, roughly 40% of 18-24 year olds are students now. In addition to the $333 trillion spent on higher education each year, college students are shelling out $71.4 billion in discretionary spending. Coates pointed out that though we're on the "brink of a recession, colleges are a growing market." If you weren't there too, here are some insights to consider when trying to tap into this market.

College students are unique.

College students and non-college students in the 18-24 year old demographic respond differently to marketing. mtvU General Manager Stephen Friedman noted that college students say that the most memorable brands target college students and "know what students want." That said, "60% have a hard time naming brands to do a great job connecting with them as college students. Students are also more apt to focus on product features and quality, whereas non-students place greater emphasis on celebrity endorsements and product aesthetics. Additionally, non-students tend to be impulse buyers while college students research products and brands before purchase.

Senior VP of Marketing Dennis Adamovich shared a key lesson learned after launching [adult swim] on 30 college campuses: Marketing to this "elusive" audience is "not one size fits all. Every campus is different."

Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of this post...

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Ripped From The Headlines...Last Minute Reasons To Attend The Ypulse College Mashup

Posted by anastasia

This is it -- the Ypulse College Mashup kicks off in Santa Monica tomorrow evening. Alli and I will be flying down south tomorrow morning so there will be no posting for the rest of the week (we'll be back on Monday -- we're also upgrading our blogging software to MT4 so I get to learn a whole new interface - yee haw). We do have a volunteer who is going to blog a recap of the event for next week (yay!) and another volunteer who will be snapping photos to post on Flickr.

If you have clicked on the registration, but haven't quite made it through, here are a few more reasons to do it "Law & Order" style -- ripped from the headlines:

MTV Heads Off-Campus - "MTV'S ON-CAMPUS NETWORK IS NOW expanding to areas near campus. The place-based network, available on some 750 colleges, has reached deals with a range of MSOs to carry it, looking to reach students living outside the dorms." (Media Post, reg. required)

Ask mtvU's General Manager Stephen Friedman about their latest move...

Studies: Arrogance not rampant among young - "The popular view that young people are more self-absorbed than ever thanks to their parents' fixation on self-esteem stands challenged by two large new studies."

Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, is behind the study that made this view "popular." Find out what she thinks of this new research.

WSJ's website adds Facebook widget - The Wall Street Journal has just accepted Facebook's request to be online friends. Plus This Should Be Your Mantra: Be Everywhere - Being in the news business requires a great degree of flexibility, and the ability to adapt and change quickly. Too often, papers don't make passing grades on keeping up.

Find out more about "the new news" including Current TV's new social news Facebook application, the "impact" of MySpace Impact, what Newsweek hopes to accomplish with Newsfreak and why Yahoo! News succeeds in reaching college students.

Hope to see you there!

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What College Students Look For In Advertising: Honesty

Posted by anastasia

Ypulse College Mashup research sponsor Survey U just completed a batch of research on college students that they will be presenting this Friday. One of the series of questions they asked students was about what they look for in advertising -- they asked them to rank which of the following characteristics were "extremely important" to "not important at all" with a couple of rankings in between. Here's what they found in the order of what's most important...

Be truthful
60 percent said extremely important
30 percent said somewhat important
7 percent said important nor unimportant
2 percent said not very important
2 percent said not important at all

Show the functionality
41 percent said extremely important
43 percent said somewhat important
11 percent said important nor unimportant
3 percent said not very important
2 percent said not important at all

Show me the value
38 percent said extremely important
43 percent said somewhat important
13 percent said important nor unimportant
3 percent said not very important
3 percent said not important at all

Be current
30 percent said extremely important
49 percent said somewhat important
14 percent said important nor unimportant
4 percent said not very important
3 percent said not important at all

Be funny
32 percent said extremely important
46 percent said somewhat important
16 percent said important nor unimportant
3 percent said not very important
3 percent said not important at all

Speak to me in my own language
35 percent said extremely important
38 percent said somewhat important
19 percent said important nor unimportant
5 percent said not very important
4 percent said not important at all

Be cutting edge
20 percent said extremely important
43 percent said somewhat important
26 percent said important nor unimportant
6 percent said not very important
5 percent said not important at all

Be stylish
15 percent said extremely important
42 percent said somewhat important
27 percent said important nor unimportant
10 percent said not very important
6 percent said not important at all

Exude cool
8 percent said extremely important
26 percent said somewhat important
42 percent said important nor unimportant
15 percent said not very important
8 percent said not important at all

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Brands Flocking To Jake Sasseville...Wanna Meet Him?

Posted by anastasia

AdAge.com's Madison & Vine ran a story about how Ypulse College Mashup speaker Jake Sasseville has managed to attract big name sponsors like Ford, Dunkin' Donuts and Overstock.com late yesterday afternoon. After speaking to Jake about moderating our college panel, I can assure you this will be not be your ordinary conference panel -- he's going to do it "his way," which I'm hoping will make it funny, irreverent and LIVELY. Well worth staying until the end of the day Friday to watch him in action.

More from the Madison & Vine piece:

His advertisers sound convinced that Mr. Sasseville is on to something.

"He's right there speaking to the 19- to 30-year-old and doing something that's never been done," Stormy Simon, senior VP-customer care and branding at Overstock.com, said of Mr. Sasseville's off-the-cuff, show-within-a-show hodgepodge. "We thought if someone was going to pull it off, it would be Jake. Not a lot of people would have the energy and tenacity to pull off like Jake does." seville for his "The Edge with Jake Sasseville" made sense for the automaker, allowing it to "connect with younger buyers in a way that goes beyond traditional advertising," as well as giving it the "opportunity to partner with this dynamic individual and be a part of the show from the ground up."

Meet Jake in person next Friday...there's still time to register!

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Win A Free Pass To SXSW Interactive @ The Ypulse College Mashup

Posted by anastasia

For anyone still trying to decide whether to come to next week's Ypulse College Mashup, here's one more reason to attend (besides the kick-ass speakers and high quality networking with other folks trying to reach college students) -- if you attend, you will have a chance to win a free SXSW Interactive Pass valued at $400. Why should you be excited about this? Not only will you get to see the Ypulse teen panel and Core Conversation at SXSW and come party with us at Cafe Mundi, you get full access to this amazing speaker lineup.

Register today!

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Take A 'Roadtrip' To The Ypulse College Mashup

Posted by anastasia

We're heading into the final days before the latest Ypulse conference happening January 31-February 1 in Santa Monica, CA. I'm incredibly excited about our program -- if you're trying to reach college students, you should not miss this event. Other conferences may have "college tracks," but none promise this type of day-long immersion with some of the most knowledgeable people in this field. You can register online here. And on that note, we have added a final speaker, Mike Marriner, one of the founders of "Roadtrip Nation," the series following young people who hit the road after graduation in an attempt to learn from inspirational leaders who forged their own paths. More about Mike:

Post-graduation, feeling sheltered and underexposed to the world around him, Mike hit the road (with friends Brian McAllister and Nathan Gebhard) in an unsound 1985 Green RV to interview people who defined their own roads in life including the founder of Starbucks, Lobstermen, artists, the founder of Barnes and Noble, CEO of National Geographic Ventures, the scientist who decoded the human genome, CEO of Dell Computers, truck drivers, filmmakers, social activists, and many others. Contrary to what they had learned in school or from growing up in California, they learned that people can build lives in line with their passions and individuality.

That trip inspired them to create Roadtrip Nation, a grassroots organization that mobilizes students to hit the road, interview leaders from all walks of life, and explore the world for themselves. Footage from these trips are shared with individuals everywhere through the Roadtrip Nation Series on PBS, books, various broadcast partnerships, and online at www.roadtripnation.com.

Also, due to financial constraints on our end, our friends at Gorilla Soapbox will not be recording this event for us. So if you aren't there in person, you won't find it online. They will be posting video from the Tween Mashup soon...

The Ypulse College Mashup would not be happening without our sponsors -- a big thanks to our founding sponsor, Mr. Youth, our sponsor CollegeWeekLive, our research sponsor SurveyU and our exhibitors CafeScribe, Imagine Marketing Agency and our newest exhibitor, Nokia NSeries. Thanks also to our friends at Cynopsis, Youth Market Alerts, EMF, and New Music Tip Sheet for helping to get the word out.

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Last Call For 'Early Adopters'...Plus Jess & Jake!

Posted by anastasia

Today is the last day you can register for the Ypulse College Mashup and receive $100 off. We've researched the competition -- Ypulse Mashups are a steal for the quality of content and attendees (even without this discount). And...you're also helping to make Ypulse the blog and newsletter possible.

I also have two more speaker additions to tell you about. Jessica Barron, the "decider" of what goes on Yahoo!'s massively popular homepage, will be rounding out our "New News" panel. More on Jess:

Jess Barron leads a team of producers who choose the entertainment, news, sports, video, and lifestyles content that appears on Yahoo.com, the most visited site on the Internet with over 48 million global unique visitors each day. A pop culture junkie, Jess has been working in online journalism and convergence media for 12 years. Her first job was at Monster.com writing online job search advice aimed at college students. Prior to joining Yahoo!, in the late 1990s Jess worked at Scour.com, an MP3 search engine and peer-to-peer file-sharing community founded by UCLA undergrads and popularized by teens and college students nationwide. Jess holds a B.A. in American culture with a focus on media studies from Vassar College. She has published her website Poprocks.com since 1996. Her writing has appeared on MTV Online, Wired.com, and Yahoo.

And...our closing college panel will be moderated by someone I think we'll be seeing a lot more of -- or at least I know people who stay up extremely late will. His name is Jake Sasseville, and his late, late show "The Edge With Jake Sasseville" is launching February 14th after "Jimmy Kimmel" on a bunch of ABC affiliates around the country. More on Jake:

For the Gen Y audience, 22-year-old Jake Sasseville is the man. Unscripted, offbeat and at times outrageous, he's the new voice of the late night talk show The Edge with Jake Sasseville, which debuts on 40+ ABC affiliate stations around the country on February 14, 2008. The show will reach millions of households, including highly desirable college towns and the New York market via WWOR MY9.

In four short years, Sasseville has brought his show to New York and ABC affiliates from its humble beginnings on Maine public-access TV; traveled the world taping shows, including a trip to Africa that made the news on CNN; built a wide and diverse audience for the show from his tireless promotion, online social networking and blogs; attracted big-name advertisers anxious to reach the 18-to-34 crowd; and founded the Xander Foundation to help children in need. His sponsors currently include Ford Motor Company, Overstock.com, Bed Head and Red Bull.

Jake says, "I'm going to change the world and take my generation along for the ride."

You definitely won't want to leave early...

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