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MySpace is Dead! Long live………? Long live MySpace? The ever changing challenge of engaging Gen Y

It is now more than 15 years since the term “Generation Y” was coined to identify the massive, upcoming wave of BabyBoomers’ babies. Nevertheless, the frantic quest to attract the attention of these digitally engaged, net-savvy, attention-span challenged young consumers has continued unabated ever since.

In the first post of a projected regular series looking at the many and diverse challenges which Gen Y continues to pose to marketers, Kristian Carter examines the widely divergent Social Media experiences of, on the one hand: multimedia global mega brand. MTV and, on the other: Babycakes Clothing, a brand launched in his Lancashire bedroom by a 19-year old with a quirky idea and a broadband connection:

I have a favourite cautionary tale for the many brands who are currently looking to engage with Generation Y. It is the story I always relate to the many breathless proponents of social media as the key to capturing Gen Y. It is the curious case of the mega brand failing to grasp how best to exploit an established social media platform: the case of MTV UK on MySpace.

Don’t get the wrong idea: from a Gen Y perspective, MTV remains one of the coolest brands going. For Generation Y, MTV defines cool. It sets the agenda, it takes the risks and it still has a spectacular ability to keep keeping up with the zeitgeist. The channel’s decision a few years ago to include reality programming, alongside its familiar wall-to-wall of music videos, was one of the most significant Gen Y marketing decisions to date.

Via programmes such as ‘Made’, MTV became a force which allowed people – who weren’t really all that cool – to achieve their dreams. Programmes such as Cribs and The Fabulous Life Of allowed MTV and sister channel VH1 to give Gen Y a taste of what they themselves perceived to be the high life. Programmes such as My Super Sweet 16 showcased key taste makers in the key demographic – they allowed imaginations (and budgets) to run wild, showing a clearly defined sense of what is cool, and, just as importantly, what is not.

This generation did not grow up watching iCarly and The Secret Life of Zack and Cody. They grew up with Total Request Live, Justin Timberlake and they witnessed the music video progress from basic, obligatory promo into a slickly produced art form in its own right. Generation Y is still, and is likely to remain, the MTV Generation.

So why does the official MySpace identity of MTV UK have only 272 friends? The obvious response is that it is the fault of MySpace. Conventional wisdom suggests that MySpace is now dead as a platform; thus, any brand which tries to succeed upon it is already doomed to failure. That MTV UK cannot succeed on MySpace is yet another nail in MySpace’s coffin. This is a relatively easy argument, both to make and to back up, with stats tracking MySpace’s declining traffic, relative to Facebook.

But is this the whole story? Ask any member of Gen Y and they will tell you that, although they may not be on MySpace quite as much as they once were, the MySpace exodus to Facebook was mainly a matter of convenience.

They miss MySpace. They miss the freedom to customise the hell out of the design which MySpace offered. They miss the fact they felt that MySpace was ‘for them’ – rather than something which everyone else was on. They miss the ability to add widgets galore to their profiles, the ability to make money from same and the distinctive culture around MySpace, which they feel has not been replicated on Facebook. The latter culture may well have irritated everyone else, but for Gen Y, it helped define part of who they felt they were. For Gen Y, there is a certain kind of photograph, framed at arm’s length, which will always be the ‘MySpace photo’.

MySpace remains in heavy Gen Y use as a place to discover new music. MySpace music is one of the largest repositories of music on the planet and is still one of the most reliable places to check out a new band. The consumers fired up by new music have not disappeared and, while competitors such as Spotify and We7 have popped up, MySpace remains the site that most new-music heads know and love. They will read about a new band in NME, talk about it on Drowned in Sound , and invariably, check it out on MySpace.

If you need any further proof that MySpace retains its relevance, consider the case of Paul Griffiths. Paul Griffiths, 21, now lives in Manchester but it was from his bedroom in the small Lancashire town of Nelson in the north of England that he founded a global clothing brand, which now has an annual turnover of c.£500K. Babycakes (and to only a slightly lesser extent, Paul himself) now has near total name recognition amongst Gen Y.

The success of Babycakes is a true social media success story and it has driven real world expansion. Babycakes has opened a huge Manchester retail store, expanded into events and started a highly successful model management company. Babycakes also runs a branded record label while Paul was feted at SXSW 2009 as one of the most prominent marketing minds of his generation.

How did he do it? You guessed it: MySpace. Paul has the UK’s most popular MySpace page (3,147,401 total visitors since December 2006, with 81,000 MySpace friends).

There is good reason to believe that a presumed decline of MySpace might stunt the growth of Babycakes, particularly given competitor Facebook’s hostile attitude to commercial profiles, yet Babycakes continues to move from strength to strength. In anticipation of this year’s US Warped Tour, Paul announced that he was going to design a special edition tee shirt, retailing at US$20, of which there would only be 200 available at each destination. He sold out every day.

It is difficult to see anything particularly special about Babycakes designs, which are based on a series of star-shaped cartoon creatures, including PlushieCakes, KyleCakes and MeanieCakes. The key to the brand’s success is Paul’s own image and personality.
Paul models the Babycakes range himself and also uploads blogs, film footage from the Babycakes office and personal pictures onto the line’s MySpace page. Babycakes Clothing’s success has been driven by an intimate relationship between Paul and his fans and followers. He is thus in prime position to ask for input, advice and requests which he can then process immediately. There is no longer any complicated filtering system, via a Kafkaesque system of several distinct departments or layer upon layer of unhelpful individuals.

So, MySpace is still a great place for brands to reach consumers – and to sell things to them. But, in this swiftly changing environment, there is no room for mixed messages or confused communication. As we saw earlier with MTV/MySpace – for all their slickly produced perfection – in this instance, the global mega brand simply failed to reach out.

Any brands which still believe in the command-and-control marketing tactics of the past are now set to become hopelessly lost. If you want to get through to Gen Y in this, our new, increasingly inter-active, democratic and transparent creative economy, you simply have to change your thinking. You need new and innovative ways to embrace, involve and engage the talents and skills of the kids themselves. Inevitably, this means putting the power into their hands, a concept which many traditional marketing professionals still find more than slightly scary.

In upcoming posts, I hope to give some idea of exactly how brands looking to engage with Generation Y can adjust their strategy to do just that.