No Country for Old Men

A report released by Deloitte Touché, a leading consulting company, had some interesting points about mobile advertising and mobile marketing.

As a rule of thumb, mobile advertisers always connect to the younger ones – teenagers and people in their early 20s. It is widely believed that the young ones make use of mobile phones to the maximum possible extent and hence mobile marketing is generally meant for the young. But aren’t we missing something so obvious here?

Young ones, though largely mobile-savvy, don’t have a regular, disposable income. In other words, they cannot afford to spend as they wish. Most of them are dependent on part-time jobs or their parents for money – which means, no matter how good your mobile advertising campaign is, they can afford only so much.

But the case of boomers is not like this. They have a high disposable income and they are in fact the target customer base for many industries around the world. Also, people in the 30-50 age group are more loyal to carriers and phone makers. In other words, they stick to a particular carrier and a particular mobile maker as they can identify themselves with them. But youngsters, especially teenagers, don’t do that. They change their handsets often and jump from one carrier to another in search of new, cool features. What this means to carriers and advertisers is – you can’t expect something called customer retention.

Duncan Stewart, one of the authors of this report, said that targeting only the youth market may not prove to be a successful strategy in the long run.

I think the important reason behind targeting the youth market is the fact that they are the early adopters of new technologies. So, it becomes easier to appeal to them. But then, the report says it clearly – there is significant potential in the boomer market. Mobile marketers, are you listening?

PS: To those who know me, the title of this post shouldn’t come as a surprise at all.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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