Advertisers need to stay in touch with the trends of the young, writes Maria McCloy
Friday night in Jo’burg and young black people are either at Rocky Street and Hillbrow or the flavour-of-the-moment joints in the city’s swisher northern suburbs.
Kwaito, R&B and hip-hop music pumps from speakers as local artists Trompies, Arthur and Bongo Maffin keep the crowds on dance floors that shift under the weight of platforms and the newest Nike and All Star takkies, as Calvin Klein jeans battle with Versace, Gerani and Kangol for pride of place.
Girls wearing jeans, turbans and beads and boys with plaits and in the latest baggies make a fashion statement that reveals a new trend – South African youth are still highly influenced by the United States and other countries, but they’re adding a local flavour to these brands.
Little do these revellers know that those designer labels, sports shoes, drinks, the way they speak to each other and the music they listen to are very important to the mainly white folks in the advertising industry.
Since 1993, The Alternative Consultancy, run by Gill Mkhasibe, publishes a biennial report on Soweto youth. This report has ad agency appeal because, as she keeps telling them: “By the year 2000, 75% of the black population will be under the age of 25.” A market no marketeer can ignore.
Research done in 1995 by The Alternative Consultancy looked at white and black youths aged between 15 and 25. This year, however, it did “in-depth, qualitative” research into a cross-section of 200 Sowetans aged between 14 and 20 years. Some may consider the research parochial, but Sowetan kids are seen as trendsetters, according to Mkhasibe.
“Advertisers use the report as background information … they want to know about the young black consumer, what products they use, what language they use, what to do in promotions, how to sponsor events, find out what interests them … from there they look at evolving advertising from that.”
This year’s research showed a breaking down of the rigid sub-cultures which the consultancy first identified in 1992. Then you were either a rapper, mapantsula, Italian or a punk.
Mapantsulas and punks have fallen by the wayside and now kids are picking and choosing across different sub-cultures, pulling the styles they like from the different groupings. There has been growth in the popularity of designer labels and sports gear, but as Mkhasibe says: “New individualism abounds.”
The youth she spoke to agreed there was a US influence in South Africa, but none of them believed they themselves were heavily influenced by the US.
In terms of music, the most popular stars and groups were American R&B and hip-hop acts with Tu-Pac at the top, though 78% of respondents said kwaito was their favourite music.
For the first time local artists like Arthur, Mdu, Boom Shaka, Family Factory, Chiskop and Abashante made the lists of favourite musicians.
The Jupiter Drawing Room is one of the agencies which bought the research.
Strategic planning director Maggie Langlands says advertisers can’t have a knee-jerk reaction to the research.
“We won’t say `Oh Ok! Kwaito is popular so we’ll put it into the next advert’, that would be just like cutting and pasting. You absorb the information and get a better understanding. You put little things in the background, like a certain word or certain music, but it does not drive the direction.”
Television and radio ads that are most popular among Soweto’s youth were those from Coca-Cola, Sasol (the amaglug-glug and baby ad), Telkom (with Paul Phume), Pepsi (with Shaquille O’Neal), Edgars, Teaspoon Tips (with Rosalie), Chicken Licken and Fresca.
About seven in 10 of the sample said they were interested in billboard advertising and train advertising was also well-liked. But almost one-third said they did not like taxi advertising (because they use taxis).
A statistic which advertisers should note is that 81% liked cinema ads, an area largely ignored by the industry.
Most agencies have hatched their own plans to market to youth. Some “send two of our guys to go live with a black family or to soccer matches” and hold regular focus groups.
Sipho Luthuli of Azaguys says that in order to find out what the youth are up to, its strategic planning unit, Imbizo, calls in youths themselves and ideas for adverts usually emerge from these meetings.
“This segment of the market is very complex and diverse. You could find two black youths from Soweto of the same age, thinking completely differently,” cautions Luthuli.
The month-old radio station YFM targets this growing audience and it has had to devise new ways of reaching that market and staying in touch with trends which are extremely fickle.
YFM’s executive director Dirk Hartford says: “We try to do things a bit differently because accessing the youth where they are is not so easy if you go through normal commercial vehicles.”
Current distribution networks do not go to townships and squatter camps. Instead, the station dispatched young members of youth organisations with flyers, stickers, posters and T-Shirts to taxi ranks, schools and tertiary institutions. Clubs were also targeted. There are now plans for train station and taxi murals to advertise YFM.