Think of Amul and it’s not just the ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’ butter that makes you want to smack your lips. Now Amul has come up with cold coffee as well as flavoured milk packs to woo the youth. And Amul is just one in a long list of brands who wants to entice Gen Now. The reason is quite obvious. Today’s youth, unlike the previous generations, is more independent, smart and has even greater purchasing power. Think of the young crowd working in the BPOs, call centres and MNCs and you will know that it’s a generation with a mind of its own. Says Anushree Seksaria, Planning Associate, Rediffusion Y&R, “The youth population of India pegged at 50 per cent of the total Indian population is definitely large and the below 25-something segment is the obvious target audience of advertisers.”
Small wonder, then that the newest trend that can be observed in the advertising world today is how brands are aligning themselves in order to draw the attention of the youth towards them. Think of the Cadbury brand. Earlier, the advertisements were targeted at the general audience with Amitabh Bachchan playing the role of the brand ambassador. Now the brand has clearly shifted its gaze and turned its attention towards the youth as is evident in a recent commercial that shows an exchange between a young boy and girl over the phone.
Then there is Godrej that repositioned itself with the Eon air conditioner clearly targeted at the youth. It came up with a series of advertisements that beeped the message that ACs could be light on the pocket too. This was a message aimed to entice the youth segment. Then there is Sugar Free that brought in actor Bipasha Basu to project the image that the product is not just for diabetics and the obese but also for the calorie conscious.
As Saumya Chattopadhyay, Head, Strategic Planning, Rediffusion Y&R explains, “The idea is to make the brand relevant to the changing face of the country.” Blackberry, a leading mobile phone company, too did a similar thing some time ago, when it attempted to change its public image from being a phone that can be used for office goers to a phone for everyone’s use, including the youth. Now, the tagline clearly states, “Not just for the office boys.”
When the deodorant brand Rexona stepped into the market, the clear intention was to reach out to the youth. And when it failed to hone in on the segment through newspapers and TV, it did so over the Internet. Toyota is also one of the companies trying to woo the urban youth, simply because the segment has more disposable income than before. The urban youth segment is attractive to the company because it can influence the whole of the youth sector.
The sudden shift by brands is a conscious decision following data that a significant majority of the Indian population lies between the age groups of 16 and 25. The idea that India is an upcoming economy with significant purchasing po-wer is clearly taking root, believes Chattopadhyay.
Even if you look at the anti-ageing products, these are targeted not just at the 45 plus segment but at the young too. An example is that of Olay which advises customers to start using the product from the age of 25.
Explains Seksaria, “The youth is more flexible and open to experiments, making it easier for advertisers to target their new products at them.”
The youth of today are also promising customers of tomorrow. Most companies want these customers to ‘grow’ with their brand, a classic example would be that of Kotak Mahindra, which declared that it was great to be 25 on the occasion of the brand being in the market for 25 years. The company believes that this milestone will be an important landmark in its growth and hopes that the youth will grow with it as well.
In fact, that is the everlasting message that most companies want to send out — establish a life long relationship and grow with the company as it grows.
The writer is a well-known industry watcher