Next Great Thing

In 2006, we saw the rise of China’s City Kids and the “Me Generation.” This year, Asian Youth continued to push the bleeding edge of technology and connectivity. This Creative Class is rapidly becoming a sophisticated economic force. They are the first generation in history where geography is not the primary constraint on the limits of social and economic growth and organization. In 2008, it will be even more essential for marketers to understand what is motivating the future arbiters of global youth communications trends.

The wired and mobile Internet is giving youth across Asia a choice and freedom of self-expression – a chance to show their personality. They are going online to seek-out affiliations and relationships. Similar to youth around the world, they are becoming knowledge masters growing up within a user-centric navigation environment. This is a huge shift in the balance of power between information providers/designers and users/consumers. The information that Chinese youth are obtaining from online search far exceeds their parents knowledge base, and this is impacting purchasing decisions for the entire family. According to NetRatings, 47% of young people that visit a leading Chinese portal are under the age of 18.

This is also fueling the rise of all-in-one platforms (i.e., social networking sites) that enable Asian youth to communicate with their friends and consume entertainment within a new virtual content management system. Blogs are a youth-centric and immediate channel for self-expression as well as a key source of information for them. The China Market Research Group reports more than 80% of Chinese youth in urban areas (50m people between 18 - 25) are active users of online blogs and bulletin board systems (BBS), sharing their views on a variety of topics that are important to them.

From their blogs, social networking sites (SNS) and BBS they are building “intention clusters” talking about lifestyle choices such as what clothes to buy, what music to listen to and what movies to watch. They are diving deeper into the intention process by creating reviews, comparing new projects and discussing advertisements. If they really like a product, they are writing about it on one of the new crop of Intention (shopping, review-based) web sites. All indications are that Asian youth will soon be in the driver’s seat of a new global recommendation engine.

All of these new communication habits are actively playing out within mobile environments. Asian youth represent a fifth of the earth’s population and many of them are leapfrogging past the Internet directly to the mobile handset as their “first screen.” Mobile has become a personal “always-on” device, and it is merging with the Internet into one seamless communications medium.

In the coming year, we will be looking at mobile technology as the key to reaching youth across the globe with Asian youth at the forefront of the revolution. We are already seeing an increased demand for mobile handsets that are “all-in-one” devices to download ringtones, MP3s, discover new music, watch music videos and participate in mobile social networking. New wireless broadband technologies like Wi-Bro in South Korea are enabling anyone, anytime, anywhere to wirelessly access high speed Internet connections. This “active mobilization” of youth is revolutionizing the way that we will need to communicate with Asian youth in the future. It will effectively bringing mobile content, advertising, news and information together into one highly personalized global offering.