NEWS & MARKETS
COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

The Rediff Business Special/ Suparn Verma

What in the heck do kids want?

One of these days, a guy with the kind of IQ that makes Einstein look like a retard is going to come along and figure a way to answer one question that has tormented every couple from Adam and Eve on down, namely: What in the heck does this kid want?

Said guy, as and when he cracks the question, is going to earn the eternal gratitude of harassed parents. Not to mention bewildered advertisers, now groping in the unfathomed depths of unformed minds, trying to figure out the right pitch to lay out all those advertising billions on.

It is one thing to have state of the art media of mass communication -- but quite another, as the ad world is finding out, to figure out just what to do with it, how to harness it to capture the attention of an audience with a notoriously short, constantly changing attention span.

That mythical mastermind capable of answering this question hasn't materialised as yet, but premier pollsters A C Nielsen, acting for TNT Cartoon Network's GenerAsians, are having a stab at finding the answer.

Nielsen's, as they are more commonly referred to, thus carried out a survey in the Asia Pacific region with kids in the age group 7 to 18. Involving face to face interviews based on open ended questions, the survey took in over 5,700 young people in the age category mentioned above, spread over 18 cities in India, China, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, S Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Anthony Dobson, who headed the research for TNT, said the survey was aimed at "knowing more about the children's lives, which will help us know more about our market."

The main glitch confronting Dr Geoffrey David Bridgman, who prepared the questionnaire, was that there is marked disparity in the mindsets of Indian youth as compared to those in other Asia Pacific countries.

"In India, children are much more closer to their families, with parents as role models; they are very motivated in life and don't look at schools as something negative," Dr Bridgman says. "They are also very career-oriented, with many of them knowing what they want to be when they grow up."

It is to quantify, to further understand, the different mindsets that the survey was carried out.

The results, when analysed and understood, are expected to help the television channel fine-tune its programming for maximum mileage among the target generation -- which, in turn, will convince advertisers to put their money on the line.

But it will be a while before the results are translated into altered programming schedules, says Celia Chong, senior vice-president and general manager, TNT.

"It will take us time to incorporate the results of this survey in our programming, though we do have characters, like Dexter for example, and knowing that the interest of kids in India is inclined towards medicine, we can use him in our marketing," says Chong.

The survey, still in preliminary analysis, has already thrown up some surprises.

Thus: Move over Levis, Wrangler et al, the favourite jean brand of the jean generation is the eminently desi Ruf n Tuf.

More surprisingly, in the age of Nike, Reebok and Adidas, good old Bata remains the favoured brand of shoes -- and we aren't talking the granddaddy generation here. Action is next, with Reebok and Nike trailing behind.

Favourite 'time pass'? Nope, not cricket -- it's watching television, at least where the youth of Hong Kong are concerned.

Sandwiched among the amusing sidelights are far more worrisome indications. Thus, when asked what the 'in' thing was, what the latest attention-getting thing people are doing was, answers ranged from 'growing French beards' and 'mobile phones' to the dangerous 'smoking', 'getting drunk', 'hurting nature', 'political corruption' and 'girls behaving like boys'.

Awareness-wise, 53 % of the boys and 45 % of the girls knew the name of the country's leader, while some plumped for Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru. World-view? 83 % of the young people in Australia got the name of the US president dead right. Amusingly, some percentage of the rest thought it was something-Lewinsky. Or was it, duh, Yeltsin?

In India, 21% of the boys and 37% of the girls wanted to be engineers. Elsewhere, sizeable percentages of the population surveyed didn't have a clue what they wanted to be.

More to the immediate point, it is the Indian youth that receives minimum pocket money, with US $ 52 being the mean -- certainly not the kind of spending power the megabuck advertisers are interested in.

The Indian youth's 'pester power' doesn't work too good when it comes to influencing their parents in chosing the big buys -- but when it comes to choosing ice creams, clothes, candy, and bicycles, or deciding which films to watch or what toothpaste to use, the Indian kid is still king.

In fact, the five favourite commercials of the Indian youth are Pepsi and Coca-Cola, followed by Close-Up toothpaste, Colgate toothpaste and Pepsodent toothpaste.

Reason enough for the Cola giants to smile...

They dig the US, adore Sachin, and are hassled by political instability!

Specials