The Ypulse Mashup

So my good friend, the director of the Partners In Education program (he even lets me call him the "PIE Guy") says, "Hey, let's go to this conference, it'll be fun." Apparently it's all about reaching out to young people on the Internet...and not in some pervy, facing-felony-conviction way either.

Of course, at the last minute he bails and I am committed to something called the Ypulse Mashup. It turns out that this is incredibly interesting and full of folks who are amazing marketers, great people, and on doing amazing things.

Ypulse is a media platform for youth media and marketing professionals. Ypulse publishes a blog, Ypulse.com; a newsletter, the Ypulse Daily Update; and produces several conferences each year, the Ypulse Mashup events.

Founded in May of 2004 by journalist Anastasia Goodstein, Ypulse provides news, commentary and resources about commercial media for teens (teen magazines, websites), entertainment for teens (movies, video games, television, music, books), technology used by teens (cell phones, instant messaging, hardware and software), the news media's desire to attract teens (newspapers, cable news), marketing and advertising (targeting the teen market) and non-profit youth media (highlighting organizations' efforts at promoting youth voices in media and creating media by and for youth).

Not only did I have some serious networking opportunities among marketing professionals, I was treated to some valuable insight into the 9-18 year old mind.

I got to see an early premiere of the forthcoming movie, “American Teen”; C&R Research folks talked about the social and leisure habits of 9-18 year olds. Bill Carter from Fuze Marketing spoke on emerging teen technology trends in a session entitled “What’s next in Teen Mobile Space” and my favorite, a session about the success of ABS and their “Shadow Notebook” (5 subject tabbed notebooks given out for free to every college student on a particular campus…paid for by advertising on the tabs).

SURPRISING FACT: TV advertising is still more memorable than web-based, magazine, or radio advertising…Entertainment sells products: especially with humor or music

58% said funny ads most memorable
33% remembered great music
25% remembered honesty
15% identified with “people my age”

This was a surprise for me...I have often said that the best PSAs have "someone like me" in them for Soldiers -- especially young Soldiers to identify with. Apparently we just need to be funnier.

I am not sure I am ready to let that Genie out of the bottle :) Our producers often think they are funnier than they are...although I'm not 20 anymore, maybe I'm not as funny as I think I am either.

Nah...