Archive for the ‘Youth Marketing’ Category

Young Women’s Leadership at Saatchi NY

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Our visitors for TYWLS Works

Saatchi & Saatchi got involved with The Young Women’s Leadership Schools  (herein known as TYWLS) in 2010. It’s been such a great experience, that the agency decided to increase our role in the program this year. Since the fall, we’ve participated in a number of TYWLS events, the most recent being  ‘TYWLS Works,’ which happened last Wednesday.

‘TYWLS Works’ is a career awareness program that introduces High School girls to the professional world. Saatchi NY hosted nine (awesome) female tenth graders at our Hudson/Houston offices, giving them some expose to the world of advertising.  The day included an overview of Saatchi & Saatchi, guest speakers, an agency tour and one-on-one job shadowing where each of our visitors got a sneak peek at the everyday of agency life.  The day was interactive, inspiring and extremely rewarding for everyone that participated.

MORE ON TYWLS

The Young Women’s Leadership Schools (TYWLS) is a network of high performing all-girls public schools created to provide economically disadvantaged girls with a high‐quality college-prep education. TYWLS serves predominately low‐income students from non‐college educated households who are most vulnerable to being denied college access. The TYWLS educational model offers a personalized “whole girl” approach that creates academic rigor, science and math‐focused educational opportunities, healthy adolescent development programs, leadership training, connections to the world, early college and career exploration, and college access.

A big thanks to those who participated at Saatchi & Saatchi NY, including:

Sheldon Levy
Wanda Pogue
Bob Weisner
Jennifer Williams
Danica Rosen
Blanca Freydin
Camile Beckford
Anitha Thenappan
Thea Hughes
Lindsay Coomes
Jasmine Woodard
Lynne Collins
Gina Christie

Category: Events, New York, Our People, Women, Youth Marketing

McGruff, the Comic Book

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Scott Buckley, EVP/Global Equity Director at SaatchiNY, has been spearheading our revamp of The Crime Prevention Council’s much-loved McGruff the Crime Dog character over the past year. Today he shares the latest work on the campaign, an awesome comic book from our internal animation guys.

Our McGruff makeover steamed forward this week in “The Case of the Missing Sock Puppet” as we debut our first feature length comic book starring McGruff the Crime Dog, his nephew Scruff and an expanded cast of characters that offer a stronger opportunity to better reflect the problems of modern society.

After recently updating and re-skinning Mcgruff.org and developing a 5 minute anti-bullying film called “Samantha’s Choice” for the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), the comic focuses on quality story-telling, contemporary production values, and a stronger emphasis on informing through entertainment to help break through the clutter and engage kids with important lessons on how to “Take A Bite Out Of Crime” and help keep themselves and their families safe.

Saatchi created the McGruff Public Service Campaign over 30 years ago for NCPC with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice and to this day he is regarded in the White House as one of the very best brands the US Government has ever been associated with.  The original designs were created by none other than John Sullivan, who was then a junior Art Director.  Our “close-to-home” status continues with our comic book and Mcgruff.org credits going to Manny Galan, Adam Kline and Travis Lau among others.

Check out “Samantha’s Choice” at McGruff.org and click here to view a PDF of the comic book.  Share with kids and pass on these timeless tips to this generation of youth.

Category: Clients, Creative, Youth Marketing

The Saatchi Y-Spot: Slash/slash

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Every generation has always been asked that daunting, age-old question, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?” during the 18-25 years. As I mentioned in my last post, the digital world has granted our generation with infinite opportunities to choose from. The sky is the limit, from becoming yoga instructors to iPhone app developers to starting up our own sustainability companies. But with all these opportunities at our fingertips, we become overwhelmed at the idea of having to choose just one. We become little kids in an ice cream shop; so many wonderful flavors, so hard to pick between them all! Infinite options lead to infinite indecision. So we think to ourselves, instead of selecting just one path, why not experience them all? And that’s exactly what we end up doing.

We are the slash/slash generation – a group of people that define ourselves not by a single occupation, but by the diversity of our experiences, passions and networks. Instead of carving out an upward trajectory life path within one career, we seek to gather as many experiences as possible to contribute to our multi-faceted lifestyle. It’s more about creating a lifestyle than a lifepath. And the more multi-faceted the better. My friend describes himself not just as a “pharmacist” but as a “scientist geek / piano-player / music producer / professional poker player / amateur politician / outdoorsman / foodie”. Like most of our generation, he doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into one particular “type” of person. He is his own unique individual, with diverse aspects to his identity.

This brings to question our generation’s definition of the word “diversity”. Diversity as marketers speak of it refers to ethnic, racial and cultural differences. But this is nothing new to us. We grew up with a kaleidoscope of different cultures all around us, and are accustomed to being surrounded by people from different ethnic backgrounds. To our generation, the definition of diversity is not just confined to ethnic differences, but applies to all differences that make each one of us unique – each person’s background, characteristics, experiences, passions and thoughts contribute to his or her unique sense of diversity. “Diversity” to us is not the United Colors of Benetton ads promoting equality among races. It’s the American Apparel ads that market things like, “1 sash, 100 different ways to wear it,” – it’s all about how you make it uniquely your own. We are all diverse. We are all slash / slash.

There are so many different tools available in our culture to contribute to our slash/slash identities. Just look at all those college programs today that allow students to “design their own major,” from NYU’s Gallatin to Washington U’s “Individualized Studies” program. These schools advertise it to students as, “A degree program that’s as unique as you!” Students who just can’t pick between the hundreds of majors already available at a university can combine them together or invent new ones to create their own unique niche at the school.

Social networks is another way we contribute to our slash / slash selves. For us, being “cool” no longer means associating with only a certain type of people, like the Animal House’s frat boy mentality. Instead, we all seek to be Van Wilder, the coolest person in the world because he has an inside joke with everyone, from the janitor to the head of the debate team to the star quarterback to the Dean of school. Cool means having an inside joke with everyone, because the more diverse our social networks, the more multi-faceted we are as individuals. Our online social networks reflect this well. We’re uploading our professional selves to LinkedIn, showing off our fun-loving party sides on Facebook, keeping up with the music scene on Myspace, and obsessing over the latest vampire movie on TwilightersAnonymous.com. We experiment with different versions of ourselves through the diversity of our social networks.

Our slash / slash mentality is evident in our presence in the workforce as well. While other people may see us as “entitled” or “arrogant”, we just want to find a place to work that acknowledges and empowers our slash / slash identities. We don’t want to fit into the mold of a corporation, we want the company to support our unique, multi-faceted passions and talents. Take me, for example. I invented my own title here at Saatchi & Saatchi and asked to get it approved – “Strategic Storyteller,” so I could combine all the things I love doing into one job function – psychology, strategy, writing, and graphic design. We also see our early careers as a time for experimentation and adventure; we want to learn as much as possible about as many different aspects of industries as possible. We get bored easily, always on the look-out for the next adventure. We want to try out everything, and we are confident of success. Perhaps that’s why so many of us have an entrepreneurial spirit festering inside of us – today, 18-25 year olds are starting businesses at a faster rate than 35-44 year olds! College entrepreneurial programs have increased 7x in the past 6 years, and half of all recent graduates believe self-employment is more secure than a full time job.

So what does this mean for your brands? Our generation doesn’t want to fit into a one-size-fits-all mold that you’ve created for us. Instead, we want your brand to empower the diverse, slash/slash identity that we’ve crafted for ourselves. Refrain from pigeon-holing us into one label, and instead acknowledge our multi-faceted identities that make each of us unique. Or try to reflect “diversity” through our meaning of the word, instead of the way it’s been used in the industry up till now. There are many brands attempting to connect with our generation through this slash / slash insight, some doing it better than others. Miracle Whip’s hipster campaign, “Don’t Be So Mayo”  may have been a little on the extreme side, but still got quite a bit of buzz among our networks. And HP has always been doing it right, especially with their user-generated “You on You” campaign, asking consumers to submit mash-up videos answering the question, “What’s your story?” . So what about your brand? What tools can your brand provide to empower our diverse, unique, awesome slash / slash selves?

Nisha Gupta is a Youth Connection Strategic Storyteller at Saatchi & Saatchi New York.

Homepage image source -  Elias Hartvigsson.

Category: Thought Leadership, Youth Marketing

Saatchi Y-Spot: The Age of Me

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Gen Y, Millennials, Twixters, YAdults, The Boomerang Generation – so many labels fabricated by marketers scrambling to understand our generation. Instead, how about learning the perspectives of members of the generation themselves? Saatchi & Saatchi asked our interns, a group of savvy college students from all over the country, to teach the agency something new about their generation. Together, they pooled their individual experiences, interviewed friends, and explained what the life of a “Millennial” is really all about. Being part of this generation myself, I’ve culminated their responses and my own personal perspective into this bi-weekly blog series, The Saatchi Y-Spot, to tell you everything you need to know about our generation.

Our generation has coined the 18-25 chapter of our lives as “The Age of Me,” a period of unbridled self-experimentation and self-exploration. For every generation, this life stage has always been shrouded with transition and uncertainty – switching college majors and career choices, falling in and out of love and relationships, forging new and diverse friendship circles, hunting for first jobs, and learning how to really be on your own for the first time. But our generation is driven by four inherent values – “The Four Cs” – that allow us to navigate this uncertain period with ease and enthusiasm.

Confidence is our greatest driver. We have been raised as the most child-centric generation, told by adoring parents since birth that we can conquer our dreams and succeed in doing whatever we put our minds to. We’ve had self-esteem boosting classes telling us we’re unique, special and winners. We’ve been given smiley-face stickers in class and shiny trophies in sports no matter our performance level. So once we reach the 18-24 life stage, we assume we’ll succeed – it’s just a matter of finding out what we really want to do in life. And if we make mistakes along the way? Our parents graciously offer us a safety-net waiting back at home with welcome, open arms.

Although we are confident of success, we are also aware that “what we really want to do” can and will change. That’s because change is another driving factor for our generation. We’ve grown up in an era marked by drastic cultural changes – globalization, the democratization of media technologies, 9/11, the Iraq (and Afghanistan) War, global warming, the financial bust, and of course, the election of Barack Obama. Witnessing these transformations our entire lives has affirmed that old Buddhist philosophy, “change is the only constant in life,” and taught us that you can’t count on anything to stay the same. There’s no telling what tomorrow brings. So we’ve adjusted to this constant state of flux by becoming masters at living in the present and adapting to whatever the moment holds.

Choice is another fundamental value of our generation. The digital world has endowed us with endless choices and opportunities at our fingertips. Through the instant global access of the internet, we discover people creating ideas and embarking on adventures that we never dreamed of being a possibility. We become inspired by the endless opportunities around us. As such, whereas previous generations may have conformed to traditions and expectations from their family and society, we feel that there is no limit to the prospects of our future. We have the freedom to choose whatever obscure path excites us, and even create something completely new for ourselves, be it a self-selected job title (like mine, the Strategic Storyteller of Saatchi & Saatchi!), or a new product/company for the world.

This brings us to the final “C” and our greatest asset for success – Creativity. Creativity is defined as “the generation of new ideas or concepts”. Creative thinking is the realization that there is no virtue to do things the way they’ve always been before; this is a principle that we live and breathe everyday. Perhaps the value of creativity is embraced by us so much because it’s becoming embraced by society as a whole; as the competition of the global economy grows fierce, 81% of corporate leaders in America have declared that “creativity is an essential skill for the 21st-century workforce.“ One-third of MBA programs now offer students courses on creativity and out-of-box thinking. Furthermore, the explosion of reality TV also promotes creativity as the route to success, with shows like American Idol, Design Stars and Project Runway demonstrating that pursuing your creative talent will lead you to exquisite fame and money. Thankfully, the democratization of new media technologies like Photoshop and iMovie have provided sophisticated tools for creativity for all of us (we can thank Apple for that!). These cultural expectations and creative tools have empowered us to become a generation of content creators, fueled by the belief that if we want to be successful in this world, we must unleash our inner creativity.

With the “Four Cs” driving us throughout our lives, what happens when we enter the unknown transitional period of the 18-25 years? Well, let’s take a step back and assess this timeframe in the overall context of our lifespan. While the 0-17 years were a relatively stable period during which we followed a set path established by our parents and school system, and the 25+ years mark a return to stability as we settle into our own families and careers, 18-25 is a wonderfully self-indulgent time bracket devoted wholly to ourselves. That’s why we call this period the “Age of Me”; with endless confidence and limitless choices, we feel free to embark on a collection of adventures during these years, exploring multiple versions of ourselves across multiple life experiences. This is our time to soul-search, experiment, learn, grow, and reinvent the wheel… all in the quest to create a unique lifestyle that’s on our own terms, in our own way.

We’ve identified five insights that we believe really define “The Age of Me,” and which this blog series will reveal to you in the upcoming months. “Slash/slash” explains how our generation approaches that age-old question, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”. “Digital Mirror” reveals how we craft and re-craft our digital identities. “Living Frugally” shows our clever abilities to work the system to get what we want in life (with little money). “Home Redefinition” shows how we create new versions of “home” for ourselves as we grapple with the tension between comfort and independence. And the “Party Production” reveals how our generation has transformed partying into an elaborate, five-act production, complete with a dress-rehearsal and critical review.

Stay tuned for the next post on The Saatchi Y-Spot, “Slash/Slash,” for a deeper look at our generation’s approach to constructing our life-path, and how your brands can play a role in the journey.

Nisha Gupta is a Youth Connection Strategic Storyteller at Saatchi & Saatchi New York.

Image source: chathri.wordpress.com

Category: Xploring, Youth Marketing