10 Teen Lifestyle Trends To Look Out For in 2009

Now more than ever, you need to know what young consumers want in 2009

Trend #1- Fresh New Look The Insyder

As always, the pioneer youth media will be setting the trend for all others medias targeting this audience. The new look will appeal more to readers, not only in content by in column categorization (as it has been psycho-analyzed by Youth Dynamix) and thus help advertisers maximize their teen market reach.
As always, The Insyder gets a drastic makeover every year to keep up with trends and demands of the fickle teen market. For 2008/2009 – The Insyder has transformed itself into a ‘TV Network’ offering readers different ‘TV channels’ for their entertainment. These ‘channels’ have been segmented into different lifestyle categories such as Music & Entertainment, Fashion, High School News & Features, Girls’ Features, etc. ensuring we engage the teens in an environment that they related to in a fun and refreshing way.

Trend #2: Retail Networking

Forget social networking (Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, et al), there’s a networking phenomenon that is set to pick momentum within the next 12 months – Retail Networking! What’s this? Teens hanging out together at retail centres simply socialising and buying stuff. Two things will very likely make Retail Networking the next big thing;
i) Shopping Complex/Mall Popularity: It doesn’t really matter which urban centre you’re in, the concept of building one big shopping complex and renting it out to different types of businesses is catching on in Kenya (forget Village Market, The Junction, etc.), we’re talking the local ‘Shopping Mall’ with about 10 – 15 shops that include a fast food restaurant, gaming arcade, clothes store, mini supermarket, etc. These are cropping up in virtually every urban centre in the country.

ii) Increased Number of Daybugs: Courtesy of the recent high school unrest, more teens will become day scholars. Principally because of the Government policy to implement its strategy to ‘reduce’ this unrest by banning urban boarding schools, & parents’ fear for the safety of their children in boarding schools. The result? A drastic increase in day scholars! There will be a need to them to chill out and with the rapid growth of urban centre ‘malls’ chilling at the shops is becoming the ‘in’ thing to do.

Trend #3: Superstar Syndrome

Like Andy Warhol predicted, teens want their 15 minutes of fame! Growth in the popularity of local programming i.e. Papa Shirandula, Tahidi High – coupled with the increasing popularity of locally produced, but foreign owned franchises e.g. Idols, Project Fame, Big Brother, etc. will mean that TV show producers and television stations will find convergence in the two – 100% locally produced music talent search shows, dance talent search shows (the birth of Kenyan produced reality television will really happen next year).

*American artist, writer - Andy Warhol - coined the phrase “15 Minutes of Fame” which refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that attaches to an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as the public's attention span is exhausted.

Trend #4 - Textual Revolution

With more high school students becoming day scholars, the ‘ban’ on the use of mobile phones will have less effect. Expect 2009 to have the highest ever uptake of mobile phone purchase by the 15 -19 demography than ever before! Teens are text-maniacs and SMS consumption will go up tremendously, especially with more players coming into the mobile phone service providers market. With more players, you can expect a steep decline in SMS, MMS, web browsing costs.
In addition, to be more competitive, mobile phone service providers will try and integrate more added value & benefits to these youth-centric services. Thus, brands targeting the youth will get the opportunity to be more creative in using their text-based promotions, competitions, etc. SMS/texting is set to be a much more exciting tool come ’09.

Trend #5: Mobile Surfers

With four active mobile phone providers, a broadband cable that will quadruple the speed at which we access the internet, cheaper browsing rates and the popularity of 3G phones – teens will actively engage in accessing the internet through their mobile phones. How?
i)Numerous Options: With 4 players in the market, expect broadband value added services like WiMax enabled ‘surfing areas’ that allow one to surf absolutely free, happy hour surf times, etc.

ii) 3G Technology: 2G Edge/GPRS technology gives way to 3G making 2G Edge phones cheaper. Teens can now purchase, second hand, browse enabled phones at much cheaper rates than last year! With the introduction of 3G phones, top-of the-range 2G Edge phones have dropped by over 40% in price (and these are new phones)!!

A Nokia 5300 handset retailed at approximately KShs. 15,000 last year, it now sells at an average of KShs. 8,000. 2nd hand 5300’s sell for as low as 5,000/-

iii) WAP Browers: Mobile phone browsing applications like Opera Mini enable users to surf faster on their cell phones because the application compresses web pages making it faster and cheaper to browse. They now come as standard applications in phones like Nokia.
New generation MIM (Mobile Internet Messaging) service providers allow for users to send each other messages and CHAT online at absolutely no cost!
Bye-bye SMS, hello MIM!
According to the last Youth Dynamix quarterly ‘Youth Scapes’ trend report, the 3 most popular MIM services in Kenya are: Mig33, eBuddy and Nimbuzz (in that order)

To be continued this week...