Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Won’t somebody think of the children? - Reverend Lovejoy’s wife

If you listen to what is being said about the youth of today, a lot of the talk is about child obesity and falling moral standards. Some of the explanations for these phenomenons include the lack of parents in the home during the day and the role that video games or television play in their lives.

All that being said, you’d think that kids are sitting in front of a TV screen and should probably be the easiest audience to reach. Well it seems that isn’t necessarily the case. This is a generation that has been born with the capabilities to skip ads, doesn’t readily turn to traditional media and can communicate with each other in numerous forms.

So why is it that we are still targeting the youth of today through traditional media? Here are a couple of places where you might be more likely to find them and how some companies are doing it.

Stephen Davies points us in the way of My Space, whose membership has grown 609% in the last year with a total of 25 million users. I haven’t played around with the service yet, but I keep hearing about it.

While bastions of morality may condemn video games, more marketers are turning towards them. Apart from in-game advertising they also service as a channel and a potential communications tool for their users. Microsoft is giving its Xbox Live a serious push this day in light of the recent Xbox 360 launch. One interesting move that I’ve seen recently is the fact the movie trailers are now also becoming available on the service. Joystiq point out that the new X-Men 3 trailer is available on it. Talk about the perfect medium to connect with the people most likely to go see it in cinema’s next May.

Console peripherals also offer an interesting method of communication. I was listening to one of the panels at Les Blogs last week when I noticed a video running on the big screen. It took a moment for it to register with me, but it was one of the panelists playing a PS2 Eyetoy game with his friend. This really grabbed my attention because traditionally you would think that you would need a camcorder to record yourself. There is an abundance of devices though that you can use instead.

That brings me to my final point. The place you’ll most likely find a teenager is on a mobile phone, playing a PSP or watching his video iPod. There is an abundance of mobile devices these days. Stephen Davies points to an interesting post by Brian Fling called ten reasons to publish your content to a mobile. So whether it’s offering wallpaper for a mobile phone, exclusive content for PSP owners or creating a video blog, there are plenty of mediums to communicate with the world of today out there.

First things first though, traditional marketers have to realise that this generation has moved on. If they want to communicate with the current generation, they have to realise where to find them.

Technorati Tags: Brian Fling, Eyetoy, Joystiq, lesblogs, Microsoft, MySpace, Piaras Kelly, PS2, iPod, Stephen Davies, Video Games, video iPod, Xbox 360, Xbox Live