Tapping Into Teens:

1
A Division of

• Tapping Into Teens
• Strategies for Building an Online Community

Kevin Lonnie President / KL Communications,
Inc. March 27, 2007 Youth Marketing Mega Event
2
A Two Part Story

• PREMISE
• Youre looking to build or augment a proprietary
  community of young folks
• Part One
• Recruiting who we want
• Part Two
• Keeping them

3
THE PROBLEM

• DATA QUALITY
• Reaching the elusive teen
• Lead crazy, multi-tasked lives
• How do you get them to join
  an ongoing community?
  
• Where do you find these people?

4
THE CHALLENGE

• Online Recruitment
• Finding teens in their native online habitats
• Social networking sites Facebook, YouTube,
  MySpace
• Music websites iTunes, Pandora, ???

5
THE CHALLENGE
Are we speaking to who we think we are?

• Impostor is a digital Proteus who changes his
  persona whenever it suits his purposes.
• That 21 year old co-ed from Arizona State you met
  in a discussion forum may, in fact, be a retired
  steel worker from Pittsburgh.
• Impostor will claim to be black, white, rich,
  poor, young, old, straight or gay.
• Impostor's requisite imagination and good writing
  skills can make him a formidable enemy.
• Once uncovered, Impostor always flees the field,
  but he may return in another form - you just
  never know...

6
(No Transcript)
7
THE BRILLIANT SOLUTION

• We would recruit them in person and immediately
  offer them money to join our community
• This way, instead of us being down here and the
  kids being up there
• Wed wind up on the same page

8
THE BRILLIANT SOLUTION

• It was a brilliant plan, we were already working
  on our acceptance speech for the online research
  awards, but there was just one nagging detail
• It Didnt Work!!!
• Hokey Smokes! What went wrong???
• Now What Do We Do???

9
THE BRILLIANT SOLUTION

• Take 2

10
THE BRILLIANT SOLUTION

• Take 2
• Recruit them directly, but in a more appropriate
  venue, like events, concerts
• Weed out mercenaries
• Got out of survey mode, went into full blown
  recruitment mode
• Visually screened and recruited as many folks as
  possible
• Minimal incentive at time of recruitment
• Incentive would be administered online after
  completion of registration/profiler survey

11
Direct Recruitment

• So we went to a music festival to recruit teens

• Toms River Fest in New Jersey met our target
  demographic

• We set up a booth at the festival so we could
  recruit new members directly

• Also allowed us to recruit kids under the age of
  13 as long as they were accompanied by a parent

12
THE PORTAL CONCEPT

• Appeal to their desire to connect
• Supporting a cause tap into teen activism and
  volunteerism
• Tie the incentive to something that was earned
  and not just handed out

13
2006 Music Festival

• A Few of The Members We Recruited . . .

14
2006 Music Festival

• A Few of The Members We Recruited This Time . . .

15
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

16
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

17
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

18
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

19
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

20
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

21
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

22
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

23
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

24
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

25
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

26
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

27
2006 Music Festival

• Who We Recruited

28
2006 Music Festival

• Advantages of On-Site Recruiting
• Establish a personal connection with panel members

29
2006 Music Festival

• Advantages of On-Site Recruiting
• Establish a personal connection with panel
  members
• Introduce an element of excitement and buzz

30
2006 Music Festival

• Advantages of On-Site Recruiting
• Establish a personal connection with panel
  members
• Introduce an element of excitement and buzz
• Control sample quality

31
2006 Music Festival

• Advantages of On-Site Recruiting
• Establish a personal connection with panel
  members
• Introduce an element of excitement and buzz
• Control sample quality
• Ability to videotape live interviews with new
  members

32
2006 Music Festival

• Advantages of On-Site Recruiting

How do you listen to music?
33
2006 Music Festival

• Pitfalls of On-Site Recruiting lessons learned
  the hard way
• Keep the survey short and on-point

34
2006 Music Festival

• Pitfalls of On-Site Recruiting lessons learned
  the hard way
• Keep the survey short and on-point
• Its not about the incentive its about joining
  the panel (practicing delayed gratification)

35
2006 Music Festival

• Pitfalls of On-Site Recruiting lessons learned
  the hard way
• Keep the survey short and on-point
• Its not about the incentive its about joining
  the panel (practicing delayed gratification)
• Tie motivation to more altruistic values (e.g.
  environment, volunteerism, CONNECTING) and stay
  away from mercenary motivations.

36
We Got ThemNow How Do We Keep Them?

• At the end of the recruitment process,
  respondents were asked why they decided to join
• Cash, gifts, opinions of their peers?
• This allowed us to customize our Welcome Letter,
  immediately elevating our relationship

37
We Got ThemNow How Do We Keep Them?

• How teens communicate seems to change
  radically every 6 to 12 months, so I had a crazy
  proposition
• When creating online communities with teens, let
  them run the asylum
• Design the look and feel of the community
• Let them establish the rules of engagement
• Choose topics areas, etc.

38
We Got ThemNow How Do We Keep Them?

• All the top teen web destinations are based on
  Web 2.0 interactivity
• My Yahoo, My Space, YouTube, etc.
• Any teen community, even one for market research
  purposes needs to understand content personal
  interactivity are king
• Allowing for customization
• Keeping it liquid

39
We Built Our Teen CommunityNow How Do We Use It?

• A Web on the Web
• A spider reacts to the slightest vibration on its
  web
• We wanted the community to provide vision as well
  as act as a sounding board
• Typical panels are reactive
• We needed to better anticipate interest in new
  distribution technology concepts
• Identify Opportunities before your competitors
• Sniff out new ideas/trends before your company
  would ever think of asking about it in a
  conventional survey

40
Final Chord

• An electronic copy of this presentation is
  available on the KLC website
• www.klcom.com