Cellphone maker dials teens in marketing push

By Helen Vause

Hello Generation Y ... This is your new, very cool, very carefully targeted mobile phone calling.

It had to happen. Anyone who cohabits with teenagers knows they operate on another planet with the telephones on which they chatter incessantly, apparently at the centre of their world.

There are lots of them too - there are more than 420,000 young Kiwis, representing a little more than 11 per cent of our population.

Keen to figure out what makes them tick, and to target them with new communication technology, telecommunications company Ericsson was part of a major think-tank on the youth market earlier this year in Stockholm.

Canadian figures presented to that conference on the significance and influence of the youth market said teenagers in the United States would spend about $US141 billion over the next year - 60 per cent more than five years ago and that 64 per cent of parents in North America consult their teens before buying computer software. Comparatively, 25 per cent consult them on buying a family car.

Information from around the world on teenagers and mobile phones varied depending on the cost of the phones compared with the cost and efficiency of using landlines to keep in touch.

Lift-off among New Zealand teenagers and cellphones started in earnest last Christmas with the gifting season and the introduction of pre-paid phones. Ericsson says those pre-paid mobiles created awareness in the youth market by default because they were affordable, but they were not strategically targeted at Generation Y.

Ericsson's new T10 for teens will be on the streets next month, in a range of colours that are expected to press the right fashion statement buttons - juicy blue, shocking pink, funky purple and other lurid "look at me" options. It comes with all the latest features, but most significant to this market is its compatibility with Ericsson's new "chatboard."

Ericsson claims the chatboard is a world first, produced to fill the gap between mobile phone and internet communication and to change the face of short message services (SMS).

The chatboard is a very tiny keyboard that plugs into a cellular phone. A link to a dedicated web site will allow e-mails and attachments to be sent, at the push of a button, by cellphone. Users can also design their own, personalised web sites, from which graphics can be selected, attached and sent with SMS messages.

A standard English keyboard and keys marked www, phonebook, SMS and e.mail make it fast and simple to use.

Because using mobiles is still costly, Ericsson believes the upgraded messaging system is very teenager-friendly.

"Generation Y have already adopted SMS messaging as an essential way to communicate. They are the fastest adopters of text messaging and have grown up with the internet and mobile phone communication," says Ericsson New Zealand's consumer markets manager, David Georgetti.

"Chatboard closes the gap between internet and mobile phone chat."

Ericsson acknowledges that there are two sets of considerations to be met in the youth mobile market: the wants of the young, would-be users and the concerns of their parents.

To the kids this portable piece of gadgetry has the potential for badging and asserting status - showing off. They pay a lot of attention to cool, standout features.

But the mobile today goes beyond mere flash, it is rapidly becoming a must-have item for teens, says Ericsson. Their purpose is to network with friends. Until now that meant face-to-face communication or via the phone from the family home. The latter resulted in family tension, a continuously busy phone line and often a lack of privacy for the young user.

The phone-maker says the cellphone liberates teens, enabling them to catch up with each other wherever and whenever, and to make, break and change their plans on the fly.

Parents are seeing mobiles for teens as a mixed blessing. While they take the pressure off the family phone and make it easier to keep tabs on them, they also cost money to run and give kids far more opportunity for too much contact.

Good or bad though, the consensus is that teens will have mobile phones and Ericsson believes that within five years (providing user health issues are resolved) it will be seen as plain irresponsible for parents not to provide mobiles for their offspring.

While there are no figures yet on teen mobile usage and ownership in New Zealand, international research shows 15 per cent of young Americans use them, in Finland nearly all youth have one, in South Korea young people use them at double the rate of the mature market and in London usage among secondary school students is estimated at 30 per cent.

Marketing to this sector is a special proposition, notes an Ericsson research paper: "Since the same cellphone potentially benefits two different parties - with different and sometimes conflicting interests - manufacturers and service providers are going to find themselves in the tough position of having to sell the same thing to two different markets. This will put them in a very delicate position. They have to be cool to appeal to teens but they also have to satisfy the people who pay the bills.

"In the end, it may behove the hardware people to lean toward the cool side, since it's the service providers who will offer the packages that determine how the phone is used."

Regardless of how the relationship between parents, their kids and their phones shakes down, Ericsson realised it needed to move outside conventional communication channels to target Generation Y with the funky little phones. Last weekend it sponsored the first ever "rave" in Auckland, attracting more than 2500 out of a projected 4000 young people. Mr Georgetti says Ericsson is keen to increase presence at the next Big Day Out.

Another youth-targeted sponsorship is designed to create awareness of Ericsson and its products on the internet. Ericsson is using its sponsorship of the America's Cup to offer young would-be journalists a place on the media boat during the challenger series. Some of their photos and stories will be electronically transmitted back to shore and displayed immediately on the Ericsson web site.

"It goes beyond mobile phones," says Mr Georgetti. "We want to get them into our web site and all our communication opportunities."