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Hanging out on MySpace
A client of ours has been trying to reach one of the most sought after demographic segments - the unpredictable teen market. Their previous campaign hasn’t been very successful and they are now questioning their traditional approach in favour of new methods.
MySpace, the largest online social networking portal on the web, often pops up (this time being no exception) when the word online marketing is in the same sentence as the words teens and tweens , and with fair reason, it’s where a lot of them hang out. 70 million to be exact (adults included). And it’s not only our client that is taking notice. It is estimated that marketers will spend $280 million on social network advertising in the U.S. this year (imediaconnection).
So why are companies and marketer so eager to throw money at MySpace? I believe the key lays in the ever so popular teen phenomenon - “hanging out”. Teens are basically on MySpace because their friends are their and they want to hang out with those friends. I did a lot of hanging out when I was in my teens (but in a more primitive way), at friends’ houses, the local cafe or even at ‘our’ tube station. We didn’t really do anything, but hanging out was important to us because it (according to Danah Boyed’s interesting research on Identity production in a Networked Culture)allowed us to build relationships and stay connected. We were a quite typical teen group and as with most teens our daily hanging out sessions were quite private (do you remember the “No trespassing” and “Private” sticker on your door?), it was just us, no parents, no teachers and definitely difficult for others to join in.
Things have changed now. The groundbreaking thing about MySpace is that it allows companies and brands (or anyone else for that matter of fact) to join in, hang out, socialise, build relationships and connect to teenagers in a way that just wasn’t possible in the mid nineties (when I was in my teens). I mean, we would have been pretty surprised if Burger King came to one of our local hang out spots and interacted with us as anyone else in the group.
Today’s teenagers are not surprised, at least not the ones that are hanging out on MySpace. Burger King, Gatorade, The U.S. Marines, The Learning Channel, Cingular, Wendy’s, University of Warwick all have profiles or characters on MySpace that are looking for friends, some successful, some not (just like in school!) Wendy’s character ‘Smart’ is one of the successful. He is 28 years old, likes Hip-Hop, Rock and has 78 812 friends. Lvl145.christian and ‘come to darkness!!DWW are two of his friends, and they say ” I love Smart” and “I would soooo eat that”.
You’re not following me? It’s a fictive character (created with the purpose to sell hamburgers) that is hanging out with his/its ‘real’ friends, duuh!
