Young people want to play an active role in shaping the future

Did you know that 73 percent of young people have already considered unsubscribing from Facebook - but that the portal is still the most visited by them, closely followed by Google and YouTube? Or that Hotmail is still the fifth most popular email provider? If you are familiar with these facts, you would have belonged to the minority of experts from the marketing and advertising environment at Boost who are well versed in the media behavior of young target groups. A quiz app put youth marketing knowledge to the test live. The evaluation showed that the majority of these questions were answered incorrectly. However, Fabio Emch, co-founder of Boost and managing partner of Jim & Jim, an agency specializing in youth and student marketing, has noticed a steadily growing need for specialist knowledge about young target groups. Boost meets this need - with a successful mix of statistics and practical insights.

Traditional advertising is perceived most positively by young people, according to a recent youth study conducted by Jim & Jim in collaboration with Demoscope and presented at Boost. This year's Marketing Forum, on the other hand, was all about online media. For Fabio Emch, it is clear that there is a lot of potential for improvement in this area. Looking back, he considers the main message of the event to be that young users want to be even more active online. This trend carries the risk of a loss of control for companies, but it will be impossible to avoid it in the long term, predicts Emch. The presentations provided a wide range of input on how to benefit from the power of the masses in social networks.

Content placed in the hands of the users

Since 2005, Reddit.com has offered its users almost unlimited opportunities for co-creation. They can write their own content on the platform and create so-called subreddits for new topics at will. General Manager Erik Martin presented this social news aggregator, which, with visitor numbers of over 100 million per month, proves the resounding success of the concept. Martin himself sometimes doesn't understand what makes his communities attractive: bizarre subreddits such as "Pictures of Ian sleeping" - where a student regularly publishes photos of his sleeping flatmate Ian - or a subreddit with before and after pictures of high-pressure façade cleaning. Users invent what interests them and the content spreads automatically if it appeals to others.

Torsten Rehder's presentation showed that this trend is also finding its way into the storytelling of brands - in a "post-digital" world, it is increasingly being placed in the hands of the user. "Interactive, contextual and transmedial" is the advertising of the future, according to the Trend Supervisor from Trendone. Stefan Häckel, CEO of German-language Vice, presented a successful example of such a campaign. In 2013, the media company, which focuses on global youth culture, supported the production of videos in which travelers and crew members talk about their personal travel experiences for a youth-focused Lufthansa campaign. Vice has also long taken into account for its own online magazine that 30 percent of young people do not find text-only articles appealing.

A silly jogging suit conquers Facebook

Thomas M. Adams, CEO and co-founder of Onepiece, spoke at the Boost about "incredible results when you use a platform creatively in its infancy". The Norwegian company Onepiece produces one-piece hooded jogging suits that look a little silly and are deliberately designed to be too baggy to exercise in. The product caused a huge hype in Adam's home country: Within 24 months, Onepiece gained 2 percent of all Norwegians as consumers. Adams attributes this astonishing success to the fact that the three-person founding team experimented with campaigns on the then still young Facebook platform in 2009 that were able to mobilize their circle of friends. For example, the countless profile photos in which fans showed themselves with their one-piece hoods pulled up in front of their faces were effective. In a next step, the collaboration with young ambassadors made a decisive contribution to digital distribution. According to the company, Onepiece has never paid not only its own friends but also stars such as Justin Bieber or Mario Balotelli to advertise the Onepiece. The product simply suits the lifestyle of young stars, explains Adams. It creates a pleasant balance to the prevailing fashion circus. Onepiece still cultivates an open and relaxed approach to young social networks today. For example, the company's offices have their own Snapchat room. The app can be used to make images available for a set period of 5 to 60 seconds. Onepiece employees experiment with this to their heart's content.

Will Facebook, the top website for young people, soon be replaced by other networks? A large proportion of young people are at least considering turning away from the platform, according to the results of the youth study by Jim & Jim mentioned at the beginning. Young people think Facebook is out, as the street surveys that were shown between the presentations on the Boost stage make clear. In fact, however, Facebook continues to record high user numbers. And according to Boost co-founder Emch, the social network will not disappear from the scene any time soon.

Simone Isliker