Think long term, think organic, think partnership. That’s the message Mobile Youth is promoting in their recent long post about successful youth marketing strategies.
Engaging youth is no longer about short term spiking (ie campaigns), but a focus on long term creation…make youth feel significant, make them feel they belong.
They define the practice as partnership marketing, and go on to break down three successful strategies for marketing to youth:
Customer Service: good customer service – aka real human contact – is key.
Value Communication: Show that you care. Youth increasingly seek out companies and brands that display a set of core values similar to their own world view.
Event Creation: Not just sponsoring events from afar, but actually actively creating events lies at the heart of the most savvy of youth brands. Red Bull, Jones Soda, Boost Mobile (see above video) and Nike are all died-in-the-wool event creators.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for Publishing Trends about my obsessive love for Google in general, and my somewhat tempered love for my new T-Mobile/Android phone.
For now, one of my favorite party trick apps is the barcode scanner. Hold the phone over a barcode and in a few seconds you get a picture of the product, user reviews, best online prices with links to buy, and local stores with directions on how to get there. It works less well with random items (it told me my US Weekly was a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts, and that my Aquafina was Fuse water), but with books it’s a thing of beauty. Which made me wonder why Google didn’t bother optimizing Google Books for Android…
Teleread responded that it’s “time for Google to be thinking about a reflowable format like ePub,” and that FBReader is already gearing up for the GPhone.
Now Google’s Booksearch blog is noting that Barcode Scanner (one of the three main scanner apps – I downloaded ShopSavvy) allows you to instantly search the contents of books through Google Book Search as soon as you scan it.
For students, this could be an easy way to locate that critical passage that the professor was talking about in lecture. Or if you’re browsing through the shelves of a bookstore, you could use this application to easily determine whether a book contains the information you’re looking for.
So far I’ve mainly been using ShopSavvy to save my bookstore browsings to a wishlist (rather than writing the titles up the inside of my arm), but I’m interested to try this. However, with it I fear that my last real world search capabilities will finally die out. Oh well.
Zelfi, a German mobile gaming start-up, recently released JOYity - a new app for Google’s Android that “let[s] you play games and go on adventures based on your location in the real world.” They’re referring to the interaction as “Massively Multi-Player Trans Reality Games” (MMTR) versus “Massively Multi-Player Online Games” (MMO) since, as JOYity puts it, “There is no save key or a reset button in the game. You are in the middle of what is going on, and you have to get along with anything because you are not alone in the game!”
When you download the app you can play one of three games (YouCatch, Roads of San Francisco, City Race Munich) or design your own. In Roads of San Francisco, for instance, you have to go around the city picking up clues. When you get to a destination, a text or picture message tells you where to go next. It is a Scavenger Hunt with a story line. You can also design your own Scavenger Hunt games and play them with large groups of people.
Another game that comes with JOYity, YouCatch, is a version of Manhunt. Players in the same city sign up for a game. Everyone acts as both hunter and hunted at the same time. The game assigns you a player that you are hunting, while assigning you to someone else as a victim. Everyone’s location is periodically flashed on the map. When you get within 25 feet of your victim, you press the scrollball on the phone for the kill. But every time you press the button, your location is shown to all the other players as well. The last person standing wins.
From MacWorld: When you first launch Classics, the interface looks like a bookcase with the book covers facing you. You can double-tap on a book to begin reading it or tap and drag to rearrange the books.
Classics features animated page turns and sound effects, so you get the feeling of actually reading a book. Swiping your finger to left advances the page and going right turns the page back. The interface also includes a home button and a button to list the chapters of book.
If you are reading a book and exit the application, a visual bookmark is placed on the page where you exited, making it easy to pick up where you left off.
Just take a book off the shelf and settle down for a nice quiet read…
