27. January 2008 by bryan.lonn.

In the last few years magazines have started to have a decline with young consumers.  Publications thought the content was of issue and others thought the Internet was ruining this medium.  The fact is that Generation Y loves free content.  In fact they thrive on it.  Since the Internet was launched Gen Y has been there.  Helping to create social networks, video networks and news networks all offering free content without any hidden costs.  Obviously, the Chicago Tribune noticed this and launched a free newspaper for Chicago residents called the Red Eye.  If magazines want to prevail they need to start offering free subscriptions that are paid for by the Advertisers or Gen Y will just read about the information somewhere else for free.  Free content is a part of Gen Y and in research done by the Time Out magazine.  Their most popular magazine issues have been the free issues they distribute.  Quality of the magazine paper and the writing content aren’t to important to this market but free seems to be the selling point.

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27. January 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Elfyourself.com is a wonderful site that lets you put your face on a dancing elf. In fact you can add the entire families faces to the elves for simple entertainment purposes. The website launched in 2006 and has expanded drastically this past year. Over 123 million digital elves we’re created and became the 55th most trafficked website this December. 1 in every 10 Americans had gone to the website that promoted a toy company in New York. This site cost less than any commercial on television and created a larger impact. Now, if only you could implant these elves into your Myspace or Facebook and then the impact would grow. How’s that for empowering consumers!

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27. January 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Hyundai announced recently that it’s cutting their advertising budgets for the SuperBowl this year by half because of a potential U.S. recession.  Of course not all business believes a recession is due but speculation has been increasing.  I’ve always been a firm believer that the SuperBowl is great for bringing in new companies or brands.  As far as building repeated awareness, I feel that the SuperBowl doesn’t do this quite that well.  Most of us Gen Y focus are just board by commercials, we have lived with them all our whole lives.  We like to see the new movies, products, etc.  As far as building old brands they just don’t captivate us because we already know about the brand.  We choose not to go with your brand for a reason.  So maybe brands backing out of the SuperBowl especially old brands isn’t really a bad idea.  Maybe this recession thing might be onto something beyond it’s own entity.

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