How old is your Marketing Head?

It is said that Facebook has started to lose its sheen in the West, it is, however, performing exceedingly well in countries like India, Brazil and other Asian, African and some European countries.

Increasing internet penetration in India and lucrative Facebook features have led to rise in adoption of Facebook for social networking amongst web users. In India the social media giant has amassed 92 million users, which is now the 2nd highest after the U.S, according to Facebook’s own data.

The most interesting fact however, in all these numbers is that :

Teens Aged 18-24 Account For 50% Of Total Facebook Users In India!

Of the total 92 million (7.73% of the total user-base) Facebook users in India, nearly 50% belong to the age group 18-24 years.

Facebook, at an infancy stage in India, finds it's biggest follower in teens who find it exciting and are very active in Facebook. Nearly 11% or 10.6 million Facebook users in India are aged below 17, about 26 million (28% of total Facebook India population) fall in the age group of 25-34. Close to 6.6 million are between 35-44 years, 2.2 million between 45-54 years and the rest above 55 years.

India is also the youngest country in the world in terms of its population's average age which is between 25 and 29 years. With almost 65% of the population under less than 30 years we have, therefore, 65% of all consumers who are less than 30 years!

But how old is the man who is the Marketing Head or the Brand Head in your organization? Does he understand what a 21 year old gizmo freak, digital age, instant gratifying, fickle Indian wants to get from you that would either simplify his life or stimulate his intellectual wisdom? Nope! I am not recommending a 21 Year old Marketing Head. 

Want to know more? Write to me at susmita@thesmartideas.in 

Who is The New Young India?

It is very interesting to see that while the average age of India (read buyers) is just about 29 - all the marketers are well into their 50! Not only there is a huge generation gap, there is a complete lack of understanding about who these youths are and what do they exactly think.

Just pretending to be youthful won't help. Youth today are very different than what we have ever experienced, so no amount of extrapolation of old experience would work at all.

So what is the way forward?

Smart iDeAS has been continuously undertaking India Youth Study. At the moment 5 Bschools in India are working with Smart iDeAS in understanding the Next Gen Indians. We have identified 23 parameters on which we are researching and we are looking at young Indians between the age of 15 to 20 years and 20 to 30 years. 

The research is also trying to understand how they differ from their parents and on which parameters they differ most.

Once completed this is would be one of the largest empirical studies on Young Indians done recently.