While Starcom Mediavest Group has been a big player in media buying for some time, when Renetta McCann became CEO in 2005, she has taken the company to the No. 1 position in media buying in the world with an 8 percent share of the business.
Starcom MediaVest has 10 agencies through which it buys over $25 billion in advertising throughout the world. Estimated revenue for 2005 was at around $667.7 million.
Last year the company performed their own research among the 18-34 age group. The findings differ from a lot of what is being thrown around as fact.
For example, in relationship to branding in this demographic, McCann says "We found that they can be brand loyal, but they look at the honesty of a brand. They are not looking for perfection, but the brand has to do what it says it does."
To me this is an extremely important finding and something I've personally been wondering about for a while.
Many writers and bloggers have made it look like young people were completely disloyal to anything. And yet when you look at young people, they do have many unique interests in brands that mean something to them, as the study proves.
One of the problems in marketing to younger users is that they many times haven't figured out exactly what brand they want to connect to, and so try many different products and services before they make a decision. Yet that's something that has been going on for a long time.
When considering that young people want to make sure that a brand does what it says, it sounds on the surface a little odd. By that I mean wouldn't you think everybody, no matter what age group, wants a product to do what it says? Of course the answer is yes.
So what does this mean then? Younger people aren't as experienced or cautious as older people and so get burned a lot of times by promises that have been made. They are also at times very trusting.
So their response is that one of the key issues with brands is that they perform how they are promised. when thinking about this, what an opportunity to let our honesty and integrity shine forth that could win customers for life by being and communicating exactly what it is we are.
Comment Preview