Categories: Articles

The Kids Are Alright

When the habits of young people shifts, all of us Marketing hacks take one look and say, "yup, that’s where we’re heading." More often than not, it is the case.

There might be some kind of irony that the NPD Group has released a new study, Kids and Digital Content III, around the same time that CES is happening in Las Vegas. As people trot along the tradeshow floor, checking out the latest and greatest in anything and everything electronics you can imagine, this new report might act more like a downer for anyone who shelled out the shekels for booth space and hotel suite parties. The good news is that as far as the eye can see, the content may be going digital, but we still need something physical to play it all on.

The study found, "an increasing number of kids acquiring their entertainment content digitally rather than through physical means in 2008."

That was one of the many interesting sentences from the Media In Canada news item, Kids choose digital content over physical format.

"The report also examines the use of entertainment content on CE devices among kids in the same age group, focusing on content acquisition on computers, portable digital music/video players (PDMP), cell phones and video game systems. Though each device is traditionally associated with one type of content (ringtones on cell phones, for example), NPD found that CE convergence is on the rise, with more cell phone users in the age group listening to music and sending/receiving images on their handsets than in previous years. PDMP users were also watching music videos on their portable players. Also, kids spent 12% of the time on their video game systems watching movies."

It is, without question, habit forming. For many years, I have been pushing the idea that many of the more advanced gaming consoles were much more than that. These gaming platforms are quickly becoming the entertainment center of the entire house. It acts as the place to host and play music and movies, connect with friends, share pictures and, oh yeah, play games as well (and the price is fairly affordable if you contrast it with the many appliances and hardware that your parents used to need to power the den). Clearly, the gaming systems are the gateway, but here we are – once again – faced with incredible challenges for both the content producers and the media companies.

Maybe all of those traditional companies need to stop sniffing around the Blogs and Online Social Networks, and need to be looking a little further into the future at gaming consoles and other channels where the media might be centralized and consumed?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.