Difficulty in catching the attention of the youth in this cluttered market:

Self reference criteria (SRC) has been one of the major reasons for companies failing when they have decided to open businesses in different countries with different culture and socio-economic and infrastructural parameters. Be it Wal-mart in South America or Kellogg’s when it launched in India (it failed since cornflakes are eaten with cold milk in the US and Indian people drink hot milk) thinking of India as the country with half a billion population of middle class ready for consumerism. But they failed since the Indian population behaved in a different way from the way a developing country population has in history.

A week back I met my school friends after a ling time. Some of them were working fro IT companies, some in manufacturing, some in finance and some in services. While we were talking, I mentioned about the broking firms such as Motilal Oswal and Angel broking. They were not aware of it. I asked them in astonishment that did they not see so many ads in TV or print about these companies. And they casually brushed it off saying who watches ads in TV or who reads newspapers. They never read magazines. The marketer in me suddenly woke up and I started to read between the lines. These young people do not read newspapers. They change channel during commercial breaks. They have a very small attention span and like all people while growing up, are restless.

How is it possible then for marketers to catch their attention and build a loyalty? These people, as per the latest fad, are heavily into social networking. A lot ha been said about the future of advertising being on social networking and this is the place to be. I am a bit skeptical about it. It seems to be a passing phase. Once the novelty factor wears off, social networks would also be just ‘one of the media’.

This is a self reference criteria which I am looking at. But I don’t think I would be totally off the mark. The general behavior of the youth seems to be like that. Thus it seems that it would get increasingly difficult to get returns for your advertising spends on mass media. It would require more a focused approach especially if the product/ service is for this young audience.