Who is listening?

In media and advertsing, especially looking at what we like to call “young people”, the question is always: are they listening? and if not why not?

I was leading workshops with groups of Blyk users last fall trying to find out what they thought of the service but also how they would imgine it developing. Future-casting some would call it.

One thing that became obvious very quickly is that these young people above the age of 20 already relied on and trusted services they had been interacting with for a few years. They were already uncomfortable with the idea of change. We often think that young people are by nature care-free, adventurous, open-minded and an opportunistic about any new opportunity, but maybe that’s a way of glorifying those wonder years.

In the toy industry, they call that age compression, which in their case means the age at which children are willing to play with toys and not screen-based games. The first time a young person has to enter into contact with a service they are likely to be married to for a few years is clearly a key one for Blyk but also for most services like banking, video rentals, gyms, etc. How could we think about this in terms of services like Blyk’s? Attention compression? Opportunity compression? Something to think about for Easter…

Photo from a Matthias Ries project.

1 comment March 21st, 2008