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| Interview: Mr. Youth and the Future of Social Media Marketing Posted: 04 May 2009 03:31 PM PDT
So in terms of being smart about social media marketing, a brand needs to be smart and ready to be held accountable for not only its product but its interaction within the social media realm. Mr. Youth is a marketing agency that takes these things into consideration, and creates a marketing process around brands with some of these goals in mind. Below is an interview with Brandon Evans, a managing partner over at Mr. Youth. Brandon Evans: Mr. Youth is a new breed of agency that is empowering individuals to be a part of the marketing process by engaging more deeply with brands. We create campaigns that focus on the consumer and their communities, creating messages that have the ability to spread from peer-to-peer through, utilizing channels that best enable this to occur. Brandon Evans: The breadth of media choices and social technologies have exponentially increased the number of places where consumers can now get information on new products and services. While mass media still serves certain marketing goals, its power is greatly decreased due to the consumers ability (and preference) to often tune it out and even when the message is received, it is less trusted as consumers have the ability to hear about products from peers and communities much easier before purchasing. In the new era, brands will increasingly need to focus on the product and message. It is even more important to have a truly differentiated product that lives up to claims and delivers on a clear consumer need. The brand message or promotion should be designed to spread and be powerful enough to get consumers talking. While traditional media will still assist in generating wide spread awareness, focus on social interactive, word-of-mouth and tangible offline experiences will be increasingly critical to creating movements, establishing and growing passionate bases and remaining close enough to consumers to evolve brand offerings at the rapid pace that consumers now require and expect. Kristen Nicole: How do you apply your concepts to various brands that look to online marketing in today’s age? Brandon Evans: We call our online marketing discipline "Social Interactive" at Mr Youth. We have done so for over two years now, before social media was nearly as engrained in nearly all demographics as it is now becoming. We see a strong need for everything we do online to have "social" at the core. Nearly every site we build now has Facebook connect and other social technologies heavily integrated. With every client we review various different options for building a powerful online presence, we don't just build flashy websites. We evaluate Facebook profile pages, Facebook applications, iphone/mobile applications, twitter and other solutions as well as how to integrate these into any central web or social network presence. We are able to build all of these in house and have a strong interactive/social media strategy group that can best evaluate and advise clients on the mix that will most efficiently and effectively help them achieve their goals. This makes us very impartial as to the solution we recommend and allows us to reach the best solutions for our clients which is very rare with other digital shops. Kristen Nicole: Your own word-of-mouth project is RepNation. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Brandon Evans: RepNation began about four years ago when we realized there was a strong need for creating a way for brands to activate communities both on and offline. We now have over 100,000 reps who have signed up on RepNation to participate in research and word-of-mouth campaigns with us for leading brands. We offer four different core service offerings which gives us the flexibility to customize campaign types to fit the various different goals and demographics of our clients. That paired with the strong creative and strategic thinkers at Mr Youth as well as the ability to align campaigns closely with our other disciplines (social interactive and experiential) allows us to think about reaching and motivating consumers and communities in ways no other agency can. Kristen Nicole: What have you set out to do for Mr Youth through RepNation? Brandon Evans: We have set out to flip the marketing model from one of focusing on paid media and impressions to one focusing on earned media and deep engagements. We feel the key to success for brands moving forward will be based on their ability to motivate their core consumers and communities. RepNation and our RepWare platform gives brands a central hub for on and offline word-of-mouth campaigns that can be closely integrated with broader social media initiatives. Kristen Nicole: What type of feedback and success have you seen so far, since launching RepNation? Brandon Evans: We have seen tremendous growth from consumers participating as well as very strong ROI for our clients. RepNation fits perfectly with Mr Youth's overall offering and philosophy and clients certainly recognize our unique ability with this property and our ability to deliver what we call the modern media mix of social interactive, word-of-mouth and experiential in a totally integrated way in ways no other agency can claim to do in house.
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| The Top 10 Sites and Browsers for Kids and Teens Posted: 04 May 2009 10:09 AM PDT
Below is a list of the top ten sites and browsers out there for the kids and teens of today. Top BrowsersDownloading an entire browser is one of the safest ways to keep kids from stumbling across the wrong URL. Many have disabled the ability to even view a URL for the current web page, and have parental settings that allow only accepted websites to be accessed at all. Browsers also prove useful for establishing platforms through which other sites, educational programs and games can be marketed and accessed. But just because child safety comes in the form of a browser doesn’t mean that there aren’t social media and networking attributes. Kido’z
Kido’z is also a great platform for introducing other games, software and tools created for kids. While Kido’z doesn’t yet have an established marketplace for targeted products, the existing features on Kido’z is a really good way to get your kids started on the Internet in a safe and effective way. Glubble Seeing as Glubble is a browser for the whole family, it’s fairly customizable in terms of what each user can get out of the Glubble experience. Parents can also be quite involved from both a social and protective stance, which may be particularly important in preparing kids for an age where teens and young adults are having to learn to share their online social spaces with their parents and colleagues. Buddy Browser The social features included in Buddy Browser are good ways in which to introduce proper Internet behavior and etiquette for our youngsters without having o worry about online predators. Top Virtual Worlds and SitesSites for younger demographics are important for many reasons, from education to sheer fun in a safe environment. Interestingly enough, if you do a quick search for kids social networking, you’ll find that many of the results also come in the form of virtual worlds. Why? Because role-playing comes naturally to youngsters, and virtual worlds often provide a rather confined environment that can be fun and even sometimes educational. While there are several virtual worlds out there that are designed for adult use or are simply not targeted towards the younger demographics, more than enough of today’s virtual worlds cater to kids and teens. See below for some sites and virtual environments that are designed for our youth. Sites for KidsAs I mentioned before, kids should have a safe place to interact in the online world. I don’t really need to be redundant here, so we’ll just dive right into some of the sites out there that are geared towards children. Webkinz
The benefit of creating Webkinz’s online destination as an extension of its physical toys is a level of branding that is more likely to become a comfortable medium for parents and kids alike. Disney has taken a similar approach to bridging the tangible and digital worlds with browsers and online communities for kids, including Club Penguin. Moshi Monsters Moshi’s entire format builds off the popular trend that’s spanned the past decade, with digital pets that need care and attention. This is a good format for children’s online environments as they don’t reveal any personal information and encourage repeat behavior and site visits. The social interaction between Moshi monsters is rather passive and centered around the avatar. Club Penguin The marketplace doesn’t necessarily require payments, but it is a great opportunity for kids to create media (i.e. wallpaper, fan art, etc.), offer it to others for their own use, and learn how online interactions can occur around such media sharing. This concept also ties in well with the virtual environments that users can create for their penguin avatars, which are similar to those virtual environments found in Moshi Monsters or WeeWorld. Sites for TeensI find it particularly important for teens to have accessible online environments as well, even though this is a tricky age to target and control from a product and parental perspective. But any teen-centric site that can combine advice, education and fun is a site that I can appreciate. GirlSense Creating a marketplace around the GirlSense social network is making great use of online social interaction, media creation and sharing. Having a safe environment to discuss pertinent issues with each other is also important for girl teens and even pre-teens, especially as they are becoming more adept at utilizing online forums and networks. myYearbook
Earlier this year myYearbook teamed with Meebo to offer instant messaging tools, increasing the type of social interaction that can occur directly within the myYearbook site. Though this is a feature with a broader appeal than just the teen demographic, the partnership between myYearbook and Meebo will make for longer site visits, which many teens can afford to do. There.com As one of the more popular social virtual worlds, There.com has a large user base and is constantly being updated with new custom options for environment creation, game play and social interaction. This is all important as virtual worlds are primed for virtual goods exchange, which is becoming an integral aspect of social networking overall. Gaia Having an overlap of so many different aspects of virtual social interactions is a good way to enjoy the social media formats that can be provided via the web. Many virtual environments for adults are built around forums and guilds, so Gaia offers an interesting stepping stone for the teen demographic.
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Social media marketing. It’s a growing industry and one that we’re we’re still struggling to figure out, in terms of implementation, usability and overall effectiveness. Selling brands online can be a tricky task, but done right it can be quite successful. 
When I was a youngster there wasn’t much you could do to block me from accessing most websites out there, and there certainly weren’t a lot of websites designed specifically for the kids or teen demographics. But now, with child safety being an important parental concern for online activity and the potential for massive marketing to kids and teens, a plethora of sites, browsers, software and tools have emerged in the years since worrying about what someone will say to me in an AOL chat room.
Kido’z has a community for children where they’re able to set up very basic profiles and chat with other users in a protected environment. These profiles also prove helpful for the parents, who may want to monitor the bulk of their child’s web activity within the Kido’z browser. 
Another branded online destination, 
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