Youth Asia is looking for talented individuals looking for short or long term internship placements!

Send your resumes over to talent@youthasia.com

How about building partnerships with businesses nationwide?

Psst… read further :)

GroupsMore, a Group Buying E-Commerce Platform offering daily deals catered to young adult consumers is looking for bright, talented and creative individuals who are driven and enjoys the adrenaline rush from being involved in identifying new and creative businesses and activities in Shopping Malls to feature on GroupsMore.

Your daily tasks will involve sourcing contacts of prospective retailers and evangelise GroupsMore across Malaysia (starting from Klang Valley). You must also be able to present GroupsMore as a unique alternative for businesses to utilise as a way of acquiring new customers for their business.

So are you looking for new challenges that will take you to greater heights?

If your answer is yes – then we want to hear from YOU ! :)

1+ years of extensive on-line advertising sale experience?

Do your friends call you fearless?

Then we have just the opportunity for you:)

GroupsMore, a Group Buying E-Commerce Platform offering daily deals catered to young adult consumers is looking for engaging individuals who have clear reasons why they are driven to sell for GroupsMore and at the same time enjoys the adrenaline rush from being involved in online sales, advertising, and selling over the phone.

Your daily tasks will involve connecting with local businesses and building partnerships with merchants nationwide. From calling restaurants, spas to your favourite shopping outlets and accessory shops, you will have the opportunity to negotiate unbeatable deals on behalf of our GroupsMore customers!

So are you the fearless cold-caller who has high degree of diligence and accountability that we are looking for?

Do people often tell you that you sounds like Siti Nurhaliza, Antonio Banderas or Ryan Seacrest?

Then we would like to divert your attention here!

GroupsMore, a Group Buying E-Commerce Platform offering daily deals catered to young adult consumers is looking for individuals with great personality to be the voice of GroupsMore to current and future subscribers of GroupsMore. The position requires someone who is patient, resourceful and genuinely loves to enhance the experience of our subscribers!

Besides being the brand of GroupsMore – you will play a very important role in phone and email  communication with people across Malaysia. Therefore if you have experience in a high–volume email environment or quite web savvy – then this will definitely put you at a better edge.

We are currently hiring people who can work some weeks a standard Monday-Friday schedule, and some (up to 2) weeks per month swapping a Saturday or Sunday for one of the weekdays.

Interested? Drop us a mail to find out more

Youth Asia communicates with thousands of youths across Southeast Asia via YouthSays.com. We serve them. It’s the reason we exist. And we need you to

• Be the guardian of their happiness
• Join their conversations on YouthSays, and across Facebook, blogs, and Twitter.
• Write, blog, tweet, and send out email blasts
• Keep the team updated with what the community feels
• Contribute ideas to keep our community feeling fantastic

As the world gets online and on social media, every business needs someone who has this experience and expertise in online communications and community management. As your first job, you gain massive experience in this field, and build a career as a specialist.

When you work with our team, expect

• To surround yourself with positive, energetic team mates to help you GROW
• Take on major responsibilities, and grow rapidly with it!
• Apply your passion and skills into a business you can be proud of

This a full time role based in Petaling Jaya. You’ll need the following to qualify for the role:

• A good command of written English
• Experience in blogging, or contributing to forums
• An interest in communicating with, and helping out all kinds of people

You’ll also need to be ready to fall in love with your career.

Interested? Questions?  Think you’re the right fit?

Contact us at talent@youthasia.com with your CV, and let’s talk.

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.

In 2009, the same thing happened, but on a larger scale.

This time, the Festival took a leap up the scale. We got a larger place. Over 300 volunteers signed up to help out. Youths invited friends, who invited friends, who invited friends, and more communities, businesses, leaders and government agencies stepped in to show their support.

YOUTH’09 attracted 36,720 youths.

Now. As an announcement of sorts…

Malaysia’s Largest Youth Festival is back!

YOUTH’10. 28th – 30th May 2010. PWTC.

People ask. Why YOUTH’10?

The Festival was created for one purpose: to connect a generation of savvy youths with brands, leaders, government and the media.

When we first ran the Festival, we just wanted to create a platform where youths could come away from their computers, and hang out with each other. Meet friends, from other walks of life.

It turned out to be more than that. Some youths, with their talents & hard work, won numerous competitions and walked home richer. Young entrepreneurs were inspired by others, some even started their own businesses after that. Startups began to flourish after being in the attention of the media, and the government even adopted a couple of youth projects.

All these would not have been possible if not for the youths’ tenacious spirit & zestful appetite for great adventures.

But how do we make the best out of the youths’ potential?

It begins with the fundamentals: How youths engage with brands, leaders, government and society. The festival has proven – that with this level of collaboration, anything can happen.

As YOUTH’10 develops over the next couple of months, we are more than excited to share with you the itty gritty details of what’s to come – but for now, here’s a sneak preview of what you might get at the Festival:

Stay tuned to this space for more updates! :)

The day that I leave this office finally came.

To be completely honest, there’s a sinking feeling in my chest. I don’t like it. Maybe I’ve just got too comfortable here.

You guys are more than just mere colleagues. Hell, you crackers are more than friends to me. I see you guys as family, as siblings.
Which makes it a whole lotta hard to let go.

It’s time to close this book, and open a new one. And I know I have all of your blessings to go out and do what I wanna do.

Forgive me for any of my wrongdoings. I’m sorry if I offended you with the way I speak. I’m sorry if I accidentally raised my voice at you. I’m sorry if I got snappy. I’m sorry for isolating myself for way too long. I’m sorry.

But at the same time thank you.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn so much.
Thank you for taking a risk with me.
Thank you for believing in me and my limited abilities.
Thank you for the random hugs, the jokes and the laughs.
Thank you for turning me into a much, much happier person than I was before.
Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

But it’s not like I’m gonna die or anything right? So if you just feel like hanging out, I’m just a phone call/text/tweet away. Drop me an email. I’ll drop by the office lor to visit. And I’ll bring cookies :D

“Weekend warriors and our best friends
The writers weren’t kidding about how all good things must end
Then again some things, then again some things are far too good
Some things are far too good to go ahead and let go

Always up or down, never down and out
Dream of demons when you speak, that make you stutter when you sleep
Always up or down, never down and out
Dream of demons when you speak, that make you stutter when you sleep
Sleep now or forever hold your peace

We won’t forget Tony or Johnny
No matter how they miss us they still wish us the best on the road
Garrett took a plane to Paris, France
Now he’s cooking up entrees for the pretty pretty French girls
Bookends, Blue and Clarity to The Wall and Grace
Darkside, Wish and a toast to the Late Figure 8
Weekend warriors and our best friends
The writers weren’t kidding but the good things will live in our hearts”
- ‘Down and Out’ by The Academy Is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQQNSMJ6me8)

This is a blog post I made yesterday, but it’s in Bahasa Malaysia. If you wanna read it, this is the link. :)

You guys are amazing. Don’t let other people tell you otherwise.

Forever grateful – your ex-colleague, your friend
Lina Halizah binti Abdul Halim

We live in exciting times and I’m honored to have been given the chance share some insights about the youth market. I hope this transcript of the presentation is useful to you in sharing your ideas as well.

To those who didn’t attend the presentation, the 6th Malaysian Media Conference (MMC) is an annual alumni of about 250 media pundits, industry specialists and key media decision-makers in the fields of media, marketing, branding and advertising across Malaysia. Amongst the speakers featured are thought leaders in their space from Malaysia, Singapore, India, Australia and Japan. http://www.adoimagazine.com/mmc2009/

I was very humbled by the opportunity to speak there about the one thing I am most passionate about.

Here are the transcript and slides:

Good morning everyone.

I’m excited the Malaysian Media Conference 2009 dedicated some time to focus on the youth market.

As you know, these pesky kids are causing marketers a lot of pain. How many social networking websites do they need? Why can’t they all just watch twelve hours of TV every day?

Well, I guess we’re trying to be nice to them today, considering they’re the future of our business. They’re the ones buying all our stuff, they’re setting trends, and calling the shots.

And there’s a lot of them.

Market size-wise:

• Southeast Asia. Ages between 15 to 34. We have 200 million of them.

• Add a dash of China and India. You add another 1.1 billion of them.

• If we zoom in on Malaysia. Next year, 65% of our population will be under 35.

Yes, A LOT of them.

And collectively, they’re deciding who to support. Or who to ignore.

Today’s presentation is about them.

The youth.

My name is Khailee Ng, from Youth Asia.

We will take a good look at what they’re telling us about MEDIA, INFLUENCE, and WINNING THEM OVER.

We’ll start with Media. And influence.

To paint a clearer picture, I’ll use history’s most effective (but sometimes controversial) method to paint the picture to you.

I’m going to use women. I’m going to use images of women to show you what I mean by youths, media and influence.

Ready?

Look at her. AMAH. Ho Bo.

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

She watches 12 hours of TV everyday. And she doesn’t change the channel during ads.

She doesn’t have 1,000 friends on Facebook. But her sphere of influence directly involves my dad, and my maid.

Next up, is my Mother.

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

She watches TV 4 hours a day.

She’s on the internet 2 hours a day.

She line dances rest of the time.

As for influence, she consumes news off the internet, finds information, and forwards me loads of emails. She uses email to forward stuff to her line dancing friends, too.

That’s my mom.

Now. I’d like to introduce you to some girl who works in a nearby office, Rina.

Rina’s in her 20’s.

Unlike grandma, Rina does NOT watch 12 hours watching TV. She only watches TV when she buys DVDs.

She’s spends 12 hours online at work and at home.

She uses all these websites, social networks, devices…

Facebook, twitter etc…

Those are all tools she uses to interact with all her different circle of friends….

Rina is different from my mom, and from my grandma.

Why?

The key difference is in the so called “media” she consumes via the internet created by her social circle. Not by advertisers, or big name producers.

She communicates via the same “media” to influence her friends. She spends time on the internet doing all this, because it’s socializing.

Most of you know this as Social Media.

She uses online tools to interact with her friends. Which are major influences in her life.

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 are way at the bottom with SMS text ads.

But most of you already realize that friends influence them the most, and they influence their friends. Not banner ads.

And this affect youths like Rina? I’m talking about homegrown Malaysian youths in our backyard, not skateboarding teens in New York mind you.

Here’s how it relates to marketing to Malaysian youths:

According to the MCMC: Young Malaysians aged 15 – 34… about 87.7% of them have access to the internet!

So we ran a quick study yesterday with an open survey on YouthSays. We got 900 responses in 6 hours, telling us:

• 90% of youth have a Facebook account
  Average of 225 Facebook friends
• 95% of youth have a Friendster account but only 32% login frequently
  Average of 296 Friendster friends
• 73% of youth have a MSN IM account
  Average of 109 MSN IM friends
• 87% of youth have a Yahoo IM account
  Average of 117 Yahoo IM friends
• 38% of youth have a Twitter account
  Average of 30 Twitter followers
• Average of 278 phone numbers in their mobilephone
• Average of 262 email addresses in their email addressbook

Of course the sample is skewed to existing internet users, but remember, 87.7% of Malaysian youths between 15 to 34 use the internet… and we can conclude our Malaysian youths aren’t exactly living on trees.

Like Rina, they’re connected, and using social tools to communicate with friends.

…

Let’s review what we know about youths, media, and influence so far:

1. There’s a lot of them. 200 Million in Southeast Asia age between 15 to 34.
2. They spend most of their time online, connecting with friends.
3. They’re heavily influenced by friends, not by online banner ads.

HOW DO WE TRANSLATE IT TO MARKETING – ?????

This is encapsulated in the deep wisdom of the 90’s youth marketing gurus:

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.

And this, is why the dominant “Marketing TO Youths” model is broken.

Brands try to use tools to reach youths.

Some brands use the IM, the Twitter, the Facebook, to get their attention. Eyeblast them, stuff in text ads, interrupt them, locate where they are, target them…

Sorry, brand, but you’re not their friend.

Friends don’t do that kind of stuff. Stalkers do.

This is why ad banners are NOT VERY WELCOME in social media.

So this is why other marketers prefer to do it “the other way”. And what way is that?

A way which begins with respecting that youths are using their social tools to communicate with friends.

So you start with a substantial number of youths. You understand what they want – what motivates them. You develop your value proposition. Give it to them. Make it easy for them to use their tools to share with their friends.

This is also known as, “marketing with youths” – my own buzzword. Not too fancy, I know. Marketing With Youths. TM. Has a ring to it.

Give youths a compelling reason to use their tools to talk to their friends about you. Simple.

Realizing this, the team at Youth Asia has spent the past 4 years with these youths – understanding them, representing them, organizing them, connecting them to agencies, brands, and the government. Basically, Youth Asia cultivates friendships and builds trust with youths, then collaborate. We produced over 200 youth research projects. Nationwide campaigns, and the country’s largest youth festivals, like YOUTH’09 earlier in January.

All of this are based on direct relationships with youths, and a deep understanding of what motivates them.

How did this begin?

We cultivated this friendship via YouthSays.com

We built YouthSays.com with the understanding that youths are always voicing out, all over the web. And our value proposition to these youths instead of voicing out to no one. Now, their voices will be heard. Not only by like-minded fellow youths, but by brands, business leaders, and the government, too.

We started with 1,000 unheard voices.

In 18 months, That grew to 168,000 members across Malaysia who were reaching out to brands with opinions, ideas, and feedback.

YouthSays has grown to becoming an action network, where youths voice out for various reasons.

• 28,342 Question asked
• 269,727 Answers
• 18,931 statements, 19,738 agree/ disagree, 47,650 discussion comments
• 3 million survey questions answered!

And we continuously cultivate our friendship with them.

• We have had nationwide research projects which involved getting them to fill in diaries about who they were, and what their lifestyles were like.
• 
• We got their feedback on 1Malaysia, and presented it to the prime minister. The youths were ecstatic to know their voice was heard.
• We identified which movies they liked, and gave them pre-screenings to watch them before anyone else, then share reviews of the movies.
• We did nationwide surveys on brands they use across 13 different product categories.
• Our latest research was with Jobstreet who in turn send what young jobseekers are saying to employers across Malaysia.

To date we have conducted over 200 research projects for clients, some for ourselves – we needed to truly understand what motivates them, what makes them tick.

Truly understanding them was the best grounds to develop a real friendship for marketing with them.

For a simple example, Nike was having a warehouse sale in 2 days. They wanted a lot of people to come and buy stuff.

Instead of advertising and telling youths about it, they gave YouthSays members an hour headstart before anyone else – like how a friend would get you into a club for free. We got 1,400+ RSVPs within 2 days and over 600 of them were reported to go.

For a larger example, we’ll look at replicating “Marketing with Youths” on a mass-level.

We’ll look at what went down in history as the largest youth festival ever held in Malaysia.

YOUTH’09.

Working with our community of youths enabled YOUTH’09 to attract 20 brands, 36,720 youths over for 100 activities in one weekend, packing both halls of PWTC.

It all began by realizing that

• Young people wanted to be part of something big
• There were multiple niche youth communities already organizing their own events and trying to get noticed.

ORGANIZING

We identified each leader of a hot niche and gave them a platform, support, and promotion to host and organize their own mini-festival. Like how dance crews organized their own series of dance activities and competition throughout the 3 days.

We replicated this across 30 youth community interests.

PROMOTION

So what we did was to ask our friends at YouthSays.com what was most relevant to them, and recruited 3,500 evangelists.

These evangelists were then given tools to promote YouthSays through social media and on ground.

• They were given a unique link and “free pre-event passes” to give to their friends. For every friend who signed up, they earned RM0.40
• They could form their own groups of friends who were going. 250 groups were created through a social media widget badge
• Anyone who wanted to go could meet each other and discuss. A discussion of up to 10,000 comments were facilitated in YouthSays.com
• We asked them to create their own Facebook events  featuring Youth’09, instead of trying to own our own. 15,000 invites sent through Facebook with 2,068 confirmed guests attending
• 1,812 Friendster.com members became fan of the event
• For everyone who signed up online, we recruited volunteers for flyer distribution. 100,000 flyers distributed by evangelists and volunteers around KL, 3 days before the event.

This resulted in more than 15,000 pre-event signups on our site. And 200 volunteers involved with managing the event.

All of this was good news to the brands who believed in the power of youths.

RESULTS

• 36,720 youths participated in over 100 activities – half of them were sponsored activities aligned with brand associations.
• 1,000 new signups on Celcom’s latest prepaid plan
• 5X targeted revenue achieved at Petronas Mesra popup store
• 2000 youths signed up for the Ministry of Youth and Sports membership program
• G-Shock was reintroduced to the dance community
• Over RM100,000 worth of products sold by youth traders
• 92 bands competed in Battle of the Bands, sponsored by Celcom
• 350 participants attended HSBC and Dutch Lady sponsored National Youth Entrepreneur Convention

Post Event:

• •400 blog write ups
• •50 YouTube videos generated

Ladies and gentlemen,

And for the 166 thousand young Malaysians on YouthSays, this is only going to be the beginning of what they can achieve when they flex the influence they have over all their friends, and the rest of the country.

To wrap things up, I’ll briefly run through how this “marketing with youths” model worked for other marketers.

Obama being the main one.

He started with an awesome value proposition, based on what the citizens of USA needed most at the time.

Change.

They didn’t have mass media budgets to splurge though.

So his strategy focused on giving very specific segments of people specific tools to reach out to their sphere of influence.

And they did. The rest, you can say, is history.

As for our side of the world…

We have 200 million youths.

It’s only going to get harder to market to them with a broken model of “Marketing TO them”

The next 5 years will have more social tools, more fragmentation, and rapidly evolving media consumption trends. Finding new tools, new ways or new technology to market TO them will be complicated.

Times like these, it’s a good idea to tap into the power of solid marketing fundamentals.

Whether you’re research, advertising, communication, awareness, engagement, activation, events, etc.

GET CLOSER TO THE CONSUMER.

Do your marketing with them instead.

THANK YOU

Slides will be on youthasia

Our co-founders, Joel Neoh and Khailee Ng  were selected to represent Malaysia in the One Young World, a global leadership summit for young leaders. The inaugural summit took place on Feb. 8-10, 2010, in London.

During the One Young World Summit, together with 1000 young pioneers from 192 countries, Joel and Khailee were guided, counselled, considered and voted on the One Young World resolutions. As decision makers of the future, they had plenary discussions about issues that are affecting and would eventually affect our world, such as global health, political leadership, interfaith dialogue, media, business and environment, were guided by the One Young World Counsellors.

These Counsellors include: Kofi Annan; Bob Geldof; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Oscar Morales – the Founder of One Million Voices against FARC; Nick Haysom – the Director of Politics at the United Nations; Tony Fernandes – Founder and CEO of Air Asia; Elio Leoni-Sceti – Global CEO of EMI; Richard Sambrook – CEO of BBC Global News; Carole Stone – Managing Director of YouGovStone; Muhammad Yunus – Nobel Peace Laureate; Alejandro Toledo – Former President of Peru; Dr. Santanu Das – Founder of TranSwitch Corporation; Martin Davidson – Chief Executive of the British Council; and Harald Ludwig – co-chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment. These Counsellors are leaders of global stature who are committed to giving One Young World delegates a platform of real and global importance.

In line with what Joel and Khailee are doing in Youth Asia and the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 in Malaysia, where they organized the participation of 500 youths from South East Asia, they were selected to participate for this One Young World for their leadership potentials and engagement in social works.

Watch this space for more stuff related to Youth Asia’s involvement in ONE Young World, coming up soon.