BusinessWeek Logo

Marketing to youth? Toss some hockey sticks around the room

Posted by: Stephen Baker on January 12

Picture in Untitled Message.jpg
Here’s a room for you. Stretch out on the couch and imagine it’s your room. Is that the scent of AXE deodorant? Oh, no, that’s in the young man’s room. This room belongs to a young woman named Jenny who just might be interested in buying a Jeep…

I just received this from the marketing agency Organic Inc. In their work for Daimler Chrysler they’ve built “persona” rooms for their target audience. And to put themselves in the mind of these customers, developers hang out in the rooms.

Here’s what they offer:

Jenny’s Room: (Jeep Compass Target)
- Low lighting
- Yoga mat
- Elle Magazine
- Sex and in the City DVD playing
- Photos and candles for decoration

Roberto’s Room: (The New Dodge Charger Target)

- Crumpled up receipts
- iPod/Hard rock
- Xbox
- Room smells like “AXE” deodorant
- Open bag of chips
- Hockey sticks & old clothes tossed around room

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/

Reader Comments

Mark Kingdon

January 13, 2006 02:59 PM

Thanks for the post. It works! Our clients, partner agencies and the Organic team all do a deep-dive on the target consumer to create the assumptions that a set designer then uses to construct the rooms. Then we all use them for inspiration and as testing ground for new ideas.

Too often advertising is generic and forgettable. Why? There's no juice. There's no inspiration. There's no surprise.

We find that grounding our work in the target customer -- the real target customer -- helps us avoid this problem.


Mark Kingdon, CEO, Organic Inc.

adverlicious

May 13, 2006 03:40 PM

FYI, here's an online ad for the Jeep Compass.

While not forgettable, it's hard to see how Jenny's room inspired this. Mark, can you help us connect the dots?

http://adverlicio.us/node/1197

Post a comment

 

About

In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

RSS Feed: Blogspotting

BW Mall - Sponsored Links