Reach Your Market: Brought To You By The Cellphone Industry
OK.. I don’t mean to say, by the title of my post, that the entire cellphone industry is a raging marketing success, but many of the phone and service companies do seem to “get” exactly who their market is. And Rob Walker writes about one particular phone/service company in his latest (11.28.04) Consumed column (which appears in the Sunday New York Times Magazine regularly): Virgin Mobile.
In his article, entitled “Risky Business,” Walker notes that Virgin has a strategy of “pretty much ignoring parents and other grown-up types altogether…” Then, he lays out a few ways that the company has “dialed in” (pun intended because it just works so well…) to its core customers:
- 2,000 of these young customers serve as “Virgin Insiders” and were asked for their opinions during the phone’s development.
- Prototype phones were tested by these folks and a picture album function the company originally thought would be well-received got the boot for the final product.
- Virgin Mobile “outsourced” its marketing to the phone’s passionate core market, and the company uses photographs taken by these kids on their web site and in some of their print ads.
Of course, the kids helped Virgin finalize color scheme and ring tones etc., but that’s a bit more obvious – and I’m sure other industry brands were influenced by research on the younger generation. They key here is that Virgin happily narrowed their focus to kids and ignored the adults, then they got to know their core customer community and involved them in the development as well as marketing process – and so on. They’ve got transparent marketing down (by which I mean that they know what matters to kids and what influences their purchasing process), and a lot of other companies and industries should be taking notes.
Those brands that approach the youth market HAVE to be cutting edge and so they are forced, right from the get-go, to get to know their customers. Kids in that age range (tween to teen) can tell right away if they are being “sold” and they’ll recognize superficial attempts to reach them.
All of this stuff also applies to the “women’s market,” or specific segments thereof, but fewer brands and companies have realized this and pursued the great opportunity. How hard would it be to invite a group of women to join an advisory panel or to ask them to serve as your research team, or to just inspire them to be your on-the-street marketers? (If they feel like their time and comments are valued, the word-of-mouth grows like wildfire).
What brands out there today are connecting with their female customers via such efforts? Traditionally women-focused brands or others? Let me know if you come across one, and I’ll do the same.
