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May 2005 - Strategy Magazine
Special Report: NextGen

Online
The kids are online
What the cool brands are doing to reach them

by Annette Bourdeau
page 36

Nexopia. Piczo. Habbo. Friendster. If these words are just gibberish to you, you may be missing a big chunk of the youth demographic.

These are all names of popular teen cyber hangouts that hundreds of thousands of Canadian kids visit regularly.

Social networks, blogs and video games are all hot online activities right now. But teens are a notoriously fickle bunch, and if your ad comes off as a try-hard poseur or reeks of corporate lingo, you're not going to score any points for finding the latest online it spot.

"Marketers are ignoring good old-fashioned creative [online]," says Jay Aber, president of online marketing solutions company 24/7 Canada. "In this space, marketers are spending more time on the actual placement than the message, creative and offer."

So, how do you get it right? Hooking up with a partner in the know certainly doesn't hurt. Canadian brands like Dentyne Ice, Nintendo, Doritos, Alesse, West 49 and Oh Henry have all tapped into MuchMusic's cool factor by setting up microsites on the popular music station's Web site. And these aren't just static sites with logos slapped on top of taglines. These microsites are updated often and offer up contests, quizzes and games.

As more and more online trends come and go, the trick is to figure out which ones are here to stay, and how you can get a piece of the action. Social networks, instant messaging, blogging, vlogging (video blogging), viral, gaming - it's hard to keep up! Here's a rundown of what's going on with the latest online marketing opportunities, and some examples of who's doing things right.

Social Networks: All the rage

Friendster, My Space, Nexopia, hi5 and CHUM's Habbo Hotel are all popular ways for Canadian youth to check out their friends, their friends' friends, their friends' friends' friends and so on. Nexopia and the Habbo Hotel have a Canadian presence, while California-based Friendster has just started talking to Canadian marketers about tapping into the network's "couple hundred thousand" Canadian users, according to Joe Hurd, Friendster's director of international

business development.

Social networks boast databases full of highly detailed user profiles, allowing them to offer marketers access to very specific demographics. "The targeting we can do is phenomenal," says Edmonton-based Nexopia's commercial manager Rob Davy. Nexopia has 330,000 registered Canadian users (average age: 17.05), and 100,000 visit the site at least once daily. Nexopia and its agency 24/7 Canada have run targeted banner ads for marketers including Virgin Mobile (target: Western Canada), and West 49 (target: 18+ females in Western Canada). The site recently ran a contest with Toronto-based Universal Music Canada, and Davy plans to eventually have regular sponsors run promotions on a contests page. The site is strict about how far its advertisers can go: Its content is all created by users, so the forum and profiles are off limits.

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