It's gonna be May
I’m rotting my brain on social media so you don’t have to! Here are just a few things going on with our fellow kids this month
Welcome to the 1st edition of my newsletter! Your go-to-guide to keep up with the youths of today!
Screens & Social are their Playground
Average daily screen time for tweens (8-12) is 5 hours and 33 mins post pandemic
Roughly half (48%) of GenAlphas spend up to 4 hours on social media per day, increasing as they age. 43% of GenAlpha have a tablet before the age of 6, which quickly jumps to double by the age of 6-8, with 85% with access to a tablet.
YouTube is 20 and THE dominant platform for kids & tweens
Happy Birthday YouTube! YouTube is entering it’s adolescent era - so please, can we stop calling it ‘the wild west’? 90% of GenAlph use YouTube Daily and are so heavily influenced by what they see on there - 51% of kids say they first hear about brands through YouTube videos and only 8% via TV ads.
Non-traditional media (social, YT, streaming) IS the new “Traditional” media for kids
Social media is THE primary source for news - with 3 out of 5 ‘adult’ GenZs turning to social media for latest updates. YouTube and streaming are the entrees to the kid media diet and scrolls are the best way that GenZ get their dopamine hits. They rely on endless content stream as entertainment. On average GenAlph juggles 4.2 streaming services- but I expect this number to decrease and likely ‘alternate’ as price sensitivity amidst the economic downturn.
GenZ and Alpha expect brands (and celebrities) to be where they hang out. Immersion is different for kids like this Sabrina Carpenter skin on fornite. It’s about LIVING in these hybrid digital and real experiences - how do you empower your community and fans and play? Oh and don’t sleep on gamer ‘girls’/women - but we’ll dive more into that in another newsletter.
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Short Form is a big deal, but it isn’t the only thing.
48% of Gen Z watch bite-sized and short form video content on TikTok daily, but they are just as likely to lean back and watch / listen to their favorite (video) podcasts - with YouTube reporting over one billion monthly podcast views. Could this be related to the fact that GenZ and Alpha are considered the ‘loneliest’ generation and they just want to ‘hang out’ online and sedate with content? From my pov, something both ‘short form’ tiktok videos and podcasts have in common from a content pov is that they more closely emulate one to one conversations (kinship) vs. broadcast tv.
Immersion and participation
Lorde summoned her fandom to a surprise ‘performance’ only to get shut down by the police, only to show up a few hours later for a listening party. The event turned into her latest music video which was pumped out within 24H. Why did it work? Cause it felt like a living, breathing moment.
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Novelty Marketing & Big Bucks!
For the marketing campaign of the movie Now you see me, they sent lucky (and brave) people $119 if you texted this number! Brands, marketing - in an increasingly content driven world - EVERYTHING must be entertaining and novel…
Creator Economy and what’s next?
This is worth a watch. The creator environment is incredibly sophisticated now – and to see how the Dude Perfect crew are scaling out. A few takeaways - Walt Disney is the blueprint and being a ‘channel creator’ isn’t enough. Instead to sustain the grind of being a content creator - you must augment with franchise building efforts or as Dude Perfect calls it - “Show”, “Stage”, “Shelf”. The exciting thing is that they are taking these fundamental brand, franchise and synergy strategies and applying them into increasingly hybrid (IRL and digital) tactics.
And of course, there is also the fascinating look at how they are continuing to ‘verticalize’ their brand across content - which is both an intersection of ‘segmentation’ (i.e. Kids) as well as ‘interest categorizations’ (i.e. outdoors, golf), and the importance of content to continue to harness trust. More on this another day!
ALSO - Dude Perfect also recently hired Andrew Yaffe who used to be the head of social at the NBA - and their social strategy made strides to future proof the sport (internationally) and we certainly need to keep an eye out for Dude Perfect on the kids field.
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That’s all for now! Like this pilot newsletter? DM, email or reach out to chat. Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think and want to dig in more (or less) on. Thanks for stickin’ with me - and let me leave you with this -
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