YouthAsia

Last year, I presented the original “YOUTH: Media, Influence, and Winning Them Over” (Full transcript) at the Malaysian Media Conference.

In the material, was a simple idea about friendship.

http://www.adoimagazine.com/mmc2009

Then months passed. And many things changed. What started as a simple idea changed into something much, much more.

But to share this with you, I have to start with what has not changed (and probably will not).

Media & Influence Explained by Grandma

Meet Ah Mah.

She’s my grandmother. She is 97 years old.

MEDIA: She watches 12 hours of TV everyday. And she doesn’t change the channel during ads. Heck she doesn’t even move much.

INFLUENCE: She doesn’t hang out much with friends, or have them on Facebook. At her age, many of her friends hang out in a better place. Since she’s here, she is mostly influenced by my dad and my maid.

Now meet my mom.

Here she is holding a melon. Or cucumber. Or something.

MEDIA: She watches about 4 hours of TV a day. She’s on the internet 2 hours a day. She reads the papers.

INFLUENCE: She’s influenced by what she read on the papers, sees on TV, some crazy emails forwarded by her friends, and very occasionally, my dad. She recently began to invade Facebook too, bringing along with her, a circle of line-dancing aunties.

That’s my mom.

Now. I’d like to introduce you a young girl, Rina, from a nearby office. She’s 23 this year.

MEDIA: Unlike grandma, Rina does NOT watch 12 hours watching TV. Papers? Never liked it. Instead, she spends a lot of time online, chatting, sharing and connecting with 1,000s of ‘friends’. She consumes media created by her social circle. Perhaps that’s why it’s called social media?

In fact, she’s using different ways to connect with different circles of friends.

INFLUENCE: Not surprisingly, she’s pretty influenced by her friends, as well as what she consumes online.

Not surprisingly (again), this is true across most people connected to the internet as well.

Measuring the Influence of Friends

A study by Forrester Research and Intelliseek in 2006 revealed that recommendations from consumers leads to consumer trust.

Online banner ads are right at the bottom with text ads on mobile phones.

A similar research done by the Nielsen Company reinforces this. “Recommendations from people known” and “Consumer Opinions posted online” top the charts in consumer trust. Online video and banner ads were once again way at the bottom with SMS text ads.

But most of you already know this. Research is just proof that you’re right.

Now we know Rina is influenced by her friends. Big cheese.

Does this apply to local youth in Malaysia?

Let’s see.

1. In 2008, according to the MCMC: Young Malaysians aged 15 – 34… about 87.7% of them have access to the internet.
2. The Nielsen study was repeated in Malaysia with identical results.
3. And day before yesterday… Comscore reports that in Malaysia, social networking penetrates 84.7 % of Malaysians, with social networking visitors visiting a social networking site 22 times a month (almost every day), in the same way my Grandma watches TV every day.

Want to influence a Malaysian youth? Start by being their friend.

The “Friend Test”: Can a brand be a friend?

I have once proposed an easy 3 question test. This was featured in Marketing Magazine in late 2009, and then on 89.9 Business FM in January. 3 questions which can tell you if a brand is a friend. And it starts in the schoolyard, where you learn what being a friend really means.

Friends understand you

Friends never let you down

Friends contribute to your identity

Think of your really good friends. Is the answer yes to the above? I hope so.

Now think of a really good brand. Is the answer yes to the above?

Ask an Apple fan, or a kid who loves his Nike’s. You’ll hear it for yourself.These brands tend to pass the friend test.

But how about other brands? Are they friends? How can they be a friend?

True friendship: Actions speak louder than words.

Here’s another friend test. You see how they ACT.

Here’s my Facebook profile.

Now take a closer look.

On Facebook, you can clearly see the FRIEND’S ZONE. This is where friends hang out. I hear from my friends inside here. Sometimes we talk about brands. Sometimes we rave about them, too. And we do it in the friends zone.

Then beside us, trying to be near us, trying to look like us, be like us, and get our acceptance are the brands who lurk in the STRANGER DANGER ZONE. We turn a blind eye to the stranger danger zone (except when we are seduced by money or sex?).

Brands pay a lot of money to be in the STRANGER DANGER ZONE. Some even go so far as POP UP at you. EYEBLAST you. And DISTRACT you when you’re online. Not cool. That’s not how real friends act.

Real friends (or brands who are real friends) don’t have to. They find themselves in the FRIEND’S ZONE. And in thousands of Facebook profiles. Twitter conversations. IM chats. Email correspondences. They find their way into our minds and hearts.

I discovered this for myself, almost accidentally.

The Unintentional Discovery of Social Advertising

In 2008, a group of young people organized YOUTH’08, a weekend-long youth festival. They had a key presenter and an advertising & promotion budget, and got 21,000 visitors to what became Malaysia’s Largest Youth Festival.

In 2009, I joined this group to organize the festival again. With only a few weeks left, the key presenter couldn’t get involved in time. Without a promotional budget. All we had was the mother of all invention – necessity.

Desperate. Slightly scared. We did what was natural.

We told the youths in our online community YouthSays.com that we needed their help. We’re going to give them what’s left of our budget if they could help us tell their friends. Each young person was given their own unique link they could use across their Facebook, Twitter, IM, Email etc social conversations. We offered only what we could, which was RM0.20 for every friend they invited to register for a pre-event pass.

10,000+ Youths registered before the event. The weekend received 36,720 visitors. And the YOUTH’09 Festival was saved.

A few months later, we had a big challenge, to present a “What change do youths want to see” to a group of leaders at the Youth Engagement Summit 2009. And we needed to collect voiced from across ASEAN. Fast.

Once again, we called upon youths to use their unique link across their Facebook, Twitter, IM, Email etc social conversations, and in return, we would fly some of them down to Kuala Lumpur for the Summit.

The result? 105,205 responses in 6 weeks.

Eventually many brands, agencies, and even non profits asked us to lend them this power. We spent months developing a robust platform, and tested it on 30 social campaigns in 4 countries.

In March 2010, we rolled out 4 commercial campaigns for clients like Jobstreet.com, TM, Nestle, and DiGi.

You can check out the live campaigns in Malaysia here:

http://malaysia.youthsays.com/campaigns

As of 07-04-2010, we mobilized a total of 13,661 youths to send 201,331 of their friends to these campaigns. And now our aim is to mobilize 1 million youths to send millions more to your campaigns.

After all, if brands are already spending money on the STRANGER DANGER ZONE, getting into the FRIEND’S ZONE shouldn’t be a bad idea.

Because in the end, if we understand media and influence amongst youths, their friends is always a good place to start.

If you want my future forget my past,
If you wanna get with me better make it fast,
Now don’t go wasting my precious time,
Get your act together we could be just fine.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. Make it last forever friendship never ends.

What do you think about that now you know how I feel, Say you can handle my love are you for real,
I won’t be hasty, I’ll give you a try
If you really bug me then I’ll say goodbye.

~ Spice Girls

About the Author

Khailee Ng is the Executive Director and Cofounder of Youth Asia, where he organizes over 250,000 youths in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam to collaborate with leading businesses on research, social media marketing, and activation.

He has been organizing youth communities since his student days. His community organizing efforts in social issues and underground music has won him local and international media recognition. He completed his degree in business at the top 2% of his class a Valedictorian having studied in Sydney, San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. He also won the Asian HSBC Young Entrepreneur Award in 2006, the first (and only) time the award was given to Malaysians.

He then spent the early years of his career with Mindvalley, where he worked with entrepreneurs and technologists from 16 countries to mobilize online communities in the US and UK.

With Youth Asia, he continues to integrate the understanding of young people with modern technology to truly unleash the power of organized communities with shared goals.

Khailee writes and speaks regularly about mobilizing youths:

• Since 2008: Regular columnist on Marketing about the youth segment
• December to January 2010: “Marketing With Youths with Khailee Ng” An 8 episode special on Business FM 89.9
• 22 July 2009: “Youth: Media and Influence” @ Malaysian Media Conference 2009
• 10 January 2009: 2nd National Youth Entrepreneur Convention 2009
• 17 November 2008: MSC Innotech
• 19 January 2008: 1st National Youth Entrepreneur Convention 2008
• 18 March 2007: Asia Business Forum (ABF), Kuala Lumpur

You should follow him on Twitter http://twitter.com/khailee

Read about Youth Asia cofounder Joel Neoh.