I am NOT Maverick Marketing Sydney

What can anyone say about these lyrics?

Fun fun fun fun (repeated over and over)
Party and Party and Party and Party
It’s Friday, Friday, getting down on Friday…

And then, I’m saving the best for last (drum roll please…)

Yesterday was Thursday… Today it is Friday
Tomorrow is Saturday… And Sunday comes afterward.

AND WE LIKE THIS STUFF?

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Let’s face it: Teenagers spend hours texting, socializing on Facebook and playing video games. And it’s driving their parents nuts. Sure, there are real dangers associated with all this screen time – everything from cyberbullying to couch-potato obesity. Not to mention driving while texting, shortened attention spans and Internet porn.

But many of today’s parents spent hours as kids sitting in front of screens too – only they were TV screens. Which raises an interesting question: Is Facebook really worse for teenagers’ brains than the mindless reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch” that their parents consumed growing up?

According to the Washington Post, texting, Facebook and video games are not inherently bad. Nor are they inherently better or worse than watching TV, although they do pose different risks, such as cyberbullying, but the one thing research does highlight is that the more time kids spend in front of screens – whether it’s TV or instant-messaging – the worse their school performance.
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According to new research, young Australians are taking time out from busy online lives to read books, go to a dinner party, watch a movie or visit an art gallery.

When extrapolated out, the study finds that the 4 million Australians aged between 16 and 30 are trying to balance the demands on their lives by turning to more simple pleasures.

Lifelounge Group, working in tandem with Sweeney Research, found that Facebook remains the number one site among young people with almost half of them (47 percent) spending at least five hours each week online.

“Pressing pause is not about switching off,” Lifelounge chief executive Dion Appel told Australia Associated Press on Monday. ”It’s about temporarily alleviating the pressure. The youth market has become a generation of digital multi-taskers and they’re starting to experience digital overload.”

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I can confirm that Santa Claus will depart the North Pole at 6pm Australian time tonight.

Check out the wonderful work of Santa Claus and the mighty team at Norad.

A little bit about Norad…

For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s Christmas Eve flight.

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa.

Since that time, NORAD men, women, family and friends have selflessly volunteered their time to personally respond to Christmas Eve phone calls and emails from children. In addition, we now track Santa using the internet. Last year, millions of people who wanted to know Santa’s whereabouts visited the NORAD Tracks Santa website.

Finally, media from all over the world rely on NORAD as a trusted source to provide Christmas Eve updates on Santa’s journey.

In Memory of Colonel (Retired) Harry Shoup, USAF
NORAD’s First Santa Tracker
September 29, 1917 – March 14, 2009

RIP Harry. What you started is a truly wonderful thing for children all over the world.

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THOMAS the Tank Engine stories have been slammed by an academic for being too conservative and under-representing women.

The cheeky little train and his friends live in a world blighted by a “conservative political ideology” and a rigid class system that stifles self-expression, according to startling new Canadian academic research.

Professor Shauna Wilton also found that women are under-represented in the stories and what few female characters there are tend to have “secondary” roles or be bossy.

What’s more, she has warned that such negative messages about society subconsciously gleaned from the show may drive its young fans off the rails in later life.

Professor Wilton concluded that the themes are not “constructive” after analysing the characters and plots of 23 different episodes of the television show.

Reminds me of what happened a few years back when Australian media of various persuasions actually gave airtime to people condemning Bob the Builder for unsafe work practices by hanging out of a tractor.

Or the academic that accused Santa of promoting obesity.

Too much time on their hands. Get a life people.

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So here is an interesting story, and (as a mother) one that’s close to my heart, Forbes has declared its pick of who made it to list of Most Successful Children’s Book Characters In Hollywood.

The biggest cross-platform success is Shrek.

Yep, the big, green ogre has been a box office blessing for DreamWorks, spawning three films that earned an average of $343 million each at the American box office and a thriving franchise.

Although William Steig’s 1990 book never became a leading title, the film’s popularity propelled several movie tie-in books to land on the category’s bestseller list.

In second place on the Forbes list of most successful screens stars from children’s literature is Dr. Seuss’ legendary character the Grinch.

The green creature with a heart “two sizes too small” was introduced to generations of children and adults in 1957 in the pages of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which has sold over 3.5 million copies since.

The character became a big-screen star in 2000, portrayed by Jim Carrey. The film earned $260 million at the domestic box office.

Rounding out the top three is Larry Daley from Night at the Museum.

Milan Trenc originally published the story as a picture book in 1993, to be followed in 2006 by a bestselling, novelized version penned by Leslie Goldman.

The film version and its sequel, starring Ben Stiller as Larry, the hapless father who becomes a night guard at the American Museum of Natural History, earned an average of $214 million at the domestic box office.

To compile its list of the most successful children’s book characters on the big screen, Forbes considered movies released after 1980 based on children’s books with prominent lead characters.

Adaptations of young adult fiction–for the over-12 set–were not considered.

Rankings are based on domestic box office earnings; in instances involving one or more sequels, box office results were averaged in order to gauge the overall “star power” of each children’s character.

(While the production of a sequel is a clear indication of a character’s proven financial potential, an increase or decrease in popularity is evident using an average, rather than cumulative box office totals.)

So why does Hollywood continue to churn out kid-fiction films?

Simple: merchandise.

With steady ancillary revenue from coloring books to sleeping bags to adult T-shirts, classic characters bear incredible brand value.

Check out more at Forbes.

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WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES, LIKE REALLY, REALLY GRAPHIC.

What’s the verdict? Will it stop drivers from text messaging others while their cars are moving?

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Who is the biggest star of them all?

Zac Efron, Selena Gomez? Miley Cyrus?

Fred Figglehorn.

Heard of him? Nah, I thought not.

Just goes to show that anyone can be a celebrity – as long as they have a camera, gumption and imagination on the Internet.

So 15 year old Lucas Cruikchank plays Fred Figglehorn (either he’s sucking in the helium or speeding up tape playback) – and the tweeny-boppers love him. So much so, he just nailed a Teen Award.
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Rule #1 : Life is not fair – get used to it.

Rule # 2 : The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule #3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule #4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule #5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule #6 : If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule #7 : Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule #8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule #9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule #10 : Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule #11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

If you can read this – Thank a teacher.

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We don’t talk about it much in Australia. Most people I ask have never heard of it. It pales into insignificance alongside higher profile Facebook and Twitter counterparts, especially when it comes to Australian media coverage.

But I’ve already introduced you once to Skyrock in a previous post Skyrock, Where Teens Play. In this post, I’m going to explain a bit more why I think you should divert your attention from Facebook or Twitter for just one brief moment, long enough to get to grips with Skyrock and how it is impacting on European youth branding.

But first, let’s step back in time to its not-so-humble origins.

The Skyrock Story started in 2002.

Skyrock started life in 2002 as skyblog.com, a blog platform that had been built as part of the No.1 FM radio station in France for 13-25 year olds. It was founded by its current CEO Pierre Bellanger and while radio might differ from the Internet, Bellanger believes the essence of both mediums is the same.

“Both represent popular free expression of the new generation. The main difference is that the radio makes cultural code choices and the Internet makes computer code choices.”

In 2007 the blog brand was abandoned, and users were transitioned into a full-blown social networking platform, one that today moseys along under the Australian radar largely because of its European origins.

But unlike its American counterparts, (Bellanger says that Facebook is more complementary than competitive with Skyrock, although both share some common social features), Skyrock provides us with a remarkable case study in how a popular social media platform can be turned into a successful commercial venture.

But first the stats:

• 39 million accounts, including :
• More than 26 million blogs with 33,000 new blogs added every day
• 17 million+ individual profiles with 35,000 added every day (there is a small overlap between the two categories)
• Users have created more than 650 billion articles, loaded 580 million pictures and 37 million videos.
• Skyrock had more than 24 million unique visitors in June 2009.
• And more than 7.7 million pages viewed (also in June 2009).

In fact, if you’d like to dive a little deeper, check out the Comscore Skyrock Statistics, June 2009 (provided courtesy of Pierre Bellanger, CEO, Skyrock.)

How the French Turned Social Media into a Profit.

In 2008, the Skyrock group generated €38m in revenue; half coming from its radio operations, and half from the internet; with an ebitda of approximately €7m (€5-6m generated by the internet). Its internet operations revenue is up 42% for the first half of 2009 versus the same period last year (the radio side is up 22%).

(As a privately owned company it isn’t obliged to release financials, but Bellanger was asked to correct any inaccuracies before this story was posted so I’m off the hook for inaccuracies.)

The big question is how they managed to turn a profit when other higher profile platforms struggle.
The answer lies in advertising (nothing unusual there for the Internet) – but not any old advertising model.

What appears to be the key to the success of Skyrock is a unique advertising revenue model that has been based upon the principle of better control – control over both content and channel.

The model works like this. Skyrock designs marketing campaigns for advertisers, which it runs through its platform. The campaigns usually include the creation of mini-sites that are operational for a limited time, and that include tailored content designed to create brand appeal to Skyrock users.

So Skyrock is, essentially, akin to an advertising agency that is uniquely positioned to be able to create and place its generated marketing content through its own platform on behalf of its clients.

It’s a nice model indeed, even if some ad agencies treat it with raised eyebrows, as its direct relationship with advertisers might leave media buyers feeling somewhat redundant in its wake. They have reason to be nervous, the Skyrock client list reads like the Who’s Who of advertisers.

The Amazon equivalent of data mining, in the social media world, revolves around understanding who is friends with who. Links, relationships and affinities matter. If John Smith clicks on an ad, Skyrock will serve the same ad to all his friends. The result is a dramatic increase in the likelihood of click-through and this accelerates the spread of the advertiser’s message.

“There is no average result to that community leverage, it depends of many parameters” says Bellanger. “But we know that it improves inventory management for the publisher, shortens the time to get to the targeted number of responding contacts for the advertisers and enhances the relevancy of the ads for the reader.”

And when you control the content and the channel, and the teams needed to create and place the content, you can work with formidable speed. And alternative media channels may not be able to keep pace.

“On movies”, says Bellanger, “speed is key. The buzz has to be spread as fast as possible after the film’s release. So quickly amplifying the world of mouth is essential. Not only we are able to tell a film distributor ‘we can serve you 200,000 people aged 18-25 in region X’, but we can do that in two hours”.

Best of all, though, and what makes Skyrock a unique and exciting case study is that it has clear billable streams. In short, it is a member of an elite group – it is actually profitable.

Revenue is derived from the design of the campaigns, plus the per-day billing for impressions on the platform plus the technical services that support each campaign. Even customization is supported by clients. Its in-house teams can produce sophisticated client sites swiftly and cost-effectively – and this makes them very attractive to advertisers that want rapid results.

Of course, this is not the reason why the social platform itself is successful, although it is the story behind the money in the bank.

The Internet is easily measured which is part of the appeal of any Internet channel. The Skyrock proposition to advertisers rests on its ability to better engage with its users – after all, it knows them better than anyone else – and thus it is able to encourage greater levels of advertising participation with its young audience. And once you’re done with the data-mining, then it’s time for their creative department to kick in.

How Skyrock Campaign Encourage Youth Participation.

According to Bellanger, the key ingredient that makes Skyrock so appealing is that they never considered young people as young people, but rather as adults of young age.

“On Skyrock.com you are anonymous and make yourself known through your creations and expressions. So you can create an identity and have several, you can discover new friends – those who are publishing that resonate with your state of mind. You create an online network of affinity friends. Everything is open access and public, millions of people are there with fantastic creativity linking with each other.”

And it is upon this user-generated platform of creativity that the business moved into high gear with creativity of its own. And to get the necessary cut-through, it runs campaigns that are different from mainstream activities.

For example, when the French Army wanted to improve its image and increase enrolment, the Skyrock team built a reality TV show called “Full Immersion” where young men, unfriendly towards military life, borrowed military lives for a period of time.

Casting was performed online through Skyrock, successful candidates were enlisted into a unit, and camera crews followed them. As with any reality show, the candidates had their ups and downs, with the cameras rolling, and the traffic poured in.

The results were so pleasing that the French Navy leapt aboard (excuse the pun) to follow suit. A broadcast TV network even bought rights to a short reality show.

Or when a major French bank, La Caisse d’Epargne, wanted to be the first youth banking website in France, Skyrock built www.ecureuil.fr. The goal was to become the first youth banking site in France. It became the market leader within two years.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Advertisers include movie distributors that want to fill cinemas, sports shoe and apparel brands looking to engage with youth markets, mobile phone companies who want their phone accounts. If there was a brand of widgets for teens, they too would find a way to be promoted on Skyrock.

So, what’s next in the Skyrock Story?

The deal (when Yahoo! had agreed to buy Skyrock’s internet operations in late 2007) collapsed once Microsoft declared intentions to acquire the search engine. The company has moved on. According to TechCrunch, Skyrock has a strong valuation if the opportunity arises for its owners to consider another sale. (Not that they are in any hurry to sell.)

So a couple of months back, Skyrock created Springbird – an umbrella brand for its advertising unit and tailor-made campaign operations. (Brush up on your French, though folks, the site isn’t written in English.)

Plans for mobile communication and the deployment of mobile-based couponing that is redeemable at point-of-sale are already underway. In 2010, French teens will be cashing in on savings by scanning barcode images that are stored on their phones.

“We expect teenage brands to be amongst the first adopters,” says Bellanger, who has plans to roll the technology out first to France, and then further afield to other French-speaking markets.

The final word from Pierre Bellanger.

So I asked the Frenchman (whose ancestors have a beach named after them in Australia) whether there were three pieces of advice he could share with marketers, both qualified and aspiring, about life, social media and being successful. Here is what he had to say:

• You learn nothing through words but through experience: if you are interested in social media, experiment! Never consider that you know a service because you have read about it.
• As a flying ballet dancer, make your work disappear, just the grace, the simplicity and the elegance of the service must remain.
• Listen.

Listen. And learn.

RELATED POST: Social Media: Skyrock, Where Teens Play.

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