The Death and Rebirth of a Brand

I have concerns. My son and his friends refuse to engage with the brands our advertising agency holds dear. They're 15 or 16. They don't watch TV; they live online. They don't listen to the radio. All their music is streamed. They don't read newspapers. They get their news from punk sites like VICE.com. They're possessed by their smartphones. It's just like how kids in the 1950s were possessed by television. What's missing from their smartphones is the advertising we once knew.

Ask them, "What kind of cars do you like?" and they have no particular favorites. I wouldn't be surprised if their first encounter with cars was through the crime-committing computer game "Grand Theft Auto." Not a single car brand we know appears in that game. I completely understand why car companies think, "No way are we associating with a crime game." The gratuitous violence and numerous sex scenes are shocking to us adults. But to teens, it's nothing shocking at all. It's probably the same phenomenon as when our parents' generation casually accepted "delinquent music" like rock 'n' roll and Elvis Presley provocatively shaking his hips on stage. Is this a lesson to learn from history?

Brands that turn a blind eye to teen media trends, fearing they might lose existing customers, are they risking losing the next generation of customers? Google. Google X's self-driving cars in development. Tesla, the electric car company. Facebook. Snapchat, the photo-sharing app. Apple. Kids know these brands well. Except for Apple, they didn't learn about them through ads. They know them because of convenience and innovation.

Ninety percent of the media used by older generations is still television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and digital. Even "digital" is just traditional media transformed digitally. The content is still packed with ads. Teens pay no attention to such "digital media." Yet they will be the main players in the market as consumers twenty years from now. Unless existing brands embrace the new trends of teenagers, I don't see them continuing to play a significant role.

There is hope. Word of mouth. They never take their eyes off social media. They listen intently when friends or family recommend things based on their own experiences. Is it an irony of history that film, often called the oldest medium, is so popular with today's kids?

(Supervised by: Dentsu Inc. Aegis Network Business Bureau)