The Kaiser Foundation recently released astudy documenting the astounding fact that 8-18 year olds in the United States have increased their media use from 8hrs 33 mins per day in 2004 to 10hrs 45 mins in 2009, which means that except for when they sleeping or in school they are almost always consuming media. I call them the 10:45 generation.
Regardless of whether you think this is bad news signaling the demise of our children, or good news expecting our progeny are on the way to be becoming more literate in rich media world, as a business leaders we all must face this new reality. In particular, this short post will deal with the issue of managing your brand for the 10:45 generation.
Ido not need to recount here the facts that the combination of the cell phone, the personal computer, wireless communication and overall miniaturization has lead to an anywhere, anytime, anything world. What is interesting is to ask yourself, when did companies have to begin dealing with this always on consumer — and thereby continuous brand management? I think the modern need for continuous brand management started with 800 numbers, which was the first time that customers could effortless call a company at will. 800’s were invented by AT&T as “automatic collect calling”, and the concept took some time to catch on, but by 1992,40% of AT&T’s calls were 800 number calls. What did this do to management? Well, the first thing companies needed to learn was how to have a dialog — not just a monologue with their customers. They needed to field large call centers to answer the phones, and they needed to train thousand and thousands of people to follow the service script. Over time, firms learned the power of cross selling, and outbound calling for selling. In short, most consumer-oriented companies needed to upgrade their ability to field and answer customer requests. These early contact centers were followed by the world wide web and now the mobile web — extending a customers ability to reach any company, anytime, anyway.
Continues @ http://www.futurelab.net