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YOUTH PRODUCT & PROGRAM DEVELOPER'S HANDBOOK
7 Steps to Creating Winning Products and Programs for Topday's Kids, Tweens and Teens
This handbook is about winning. It’s about finishing ahead of the competition in whatever category you pursue for whichever youth audience you choose. It’s about what it takes to create and maximize a winning product or program for kids, tweens and teens.
What is the magic of evergreen properties and brands like Barbie or Barney or Nike or Nick? What are the ingredients that add up to grossing a billion dollars or more a year?
Or on a smaller scale, how can you create a logo design, a package, a website, a game, an advertisement, a healthy and appealing snack item, a new type of social program – any offering to young people that maximizes their attraction and involvement?
More than 80% of new products targeting young people and their families either fail or fall below expectations. With change happening so fast the explosion of this expensive statistic is exponential. In the Grocery industry, for example, there are approximately 5,000 new product introductions every year. About 1 million dollars per store is spent to introduce and promote these products. And about 80% of them fail or fall below expectations. They don’t survive on the shelf.
What about the innumerable programs designed to enrich young people’s lives – scouting and related programs, summer activities, youth sports, church-sponsored programs and many others? And now with the tech revolution, kids, tweens and teens are participating in droves in web-based “programs” that involve social interaction. What are the ingredients that need to go into these programs to maximize young people’s involvement and ensure success? In order to distinguish these types of programs from TV, film, and computer-gaming programs, we’ll refer to youth activities and organizations and some web-based social interaction programs/sites as “Social Programs”.
Indications are that while today’s young people are increasingly opting for tech-time, (videogames, computers, hand-held tech and communication devices, etc.), this involvement can be at the cost of time spent with certain, some would argue, more healthy, face-to-face and group activities such as scouting, boy’s and girl’s clubs, 4-H, and parent-child participatory groups such as Indian Guides.
Are our young people migrating headlong into a future dominated by tech activities at the expense of face-to-face and group interaction? What is the cost of this potentially harmful direction in individual human and family terms, and to our culture itself? Many are those who believe the cost may be significant.
No matter what medium, the objective is the Create products and programs that are attractive and involving and that sustain young people’s interest.
What’s needed is a plan, a strategy. What’s really needed is a system.
After more than 25 years working directly with more than 50 kid and youth-targeting corporations such as Mattel, Hasbro, Disney, Warner Bros., ABC TV, Nickelodeon, Kraft, Kellogg’s, the USDA, the Pony Club of Norway, Discovery Kids and National Geographic Society, Youth Market Systems Consulting (YMS) has evolved its systematic, step-by-step approach into a “winning formula”.
This handbook is about winning. It’s about finishing ahead of the competition in whatever category you pursue for whichever youth audience you choose. It’s about what it takes to create and maximize a winning product or program for kids, tweens and teens.
What is the magic of evergreen properties and brands like Barbie or Barney or Nike or Nick? What are the ingredients that add up to grossing a billion dollars or more a year?
Or on a smaller scale, how can you create a logo design, a package, a website, a game, an advertisement, a healthy and appealing snack item, a new type of social program – any offering to young people that maximizes their attraction and involvement?
More than 80% of new products targeting young people and their families either fail or fall below expectations. With change happening so fast the explosion of this expensive statistic is exponential. In the Grocery industry, for example, there are approximately 5,000 new product introductions every year. About 1 million dollars per store is spent to introduce and promote these products. And about 80% of them fail or fall below expectations. They don’t survive on the shelf.
What about the innumerable programs designed to enrich young people’s lives – scouting and related programs, summer activities, youth sports, church-sponsored programs and many others? And now with the tech revolution, kids, tweens and teens are participating in droves in web-based “programs” that involve social interaction. What are the ingredients that need to go into these programs to maximize young people’s involvement and ensure success? In order to distinguish these types of programs from TV, film, and computer-gaming programs, we’ll refer to youth activities and organizations and some web-based social interaction programs/sites as “Social Programs”.
Indications are that while today’s young people are increasingly opting for tech-time, (videogames, computers, hand-held tech and communication devices, etc.), this involvement can be at the cost of time spent with certain, some would argue, more healthy, face-to-face and group activities such as scouting, boy’s and girl’s clubs, 4-H, and parent-child participatory groups such as Indian Guides.
Are our young people migrating headlong into a future dominated by tech activities at the expense of face-to-face and group interaction? What is the cost of this potentially harmful direction in individual human and family terms, and to our culture itself? Many are those who believe the cost may be significant.
No matter what medium, the objective is the Create products and programs that are attractive and involving and that sustain young people’s interest.
What’s needed is a plan, a strategy. What’s really needed is a system.
After more than 25 years working directly with more than 50 kid and youth-targeting corporations such as Mattel, Hasbro, Disney, Warner Bros., ABC TV, Nickelodeon, Kraft, Kellogg’s, the USDA, the Pony Club of Norway, Discovery Kids and National Geographic Society, Youth Market Systems Consulting (YMS) has evolved its systematic, step-by-step approach into a “winning formula”.
190 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 4, 2011
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Daniel Acuff
28 books3 followersDaniel Acuff Ph.D. is considered to be one of the leading experts on marketing to children and kid-attractive products, programs and characters in the world. He is the author of the foundational book: What Kids Buy and Why - the Psychology of Marketing to Children. As a consultant for more than twenty-five years, he has assisted more than fifty major corporations with their kid-targeted new products and programs and their marketing. Companies include such as: Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, Nickelodeon, ABC TV, Hallmark, Kellogg's, Kraft, Nestle and Marvel. He assisted M&M Mars in the creation of the M&M characters. Dr. Acuff is the author of ten books, four screenplays and hundreds of articles focusing on the likes and dislikes of children, kids, tweens and teens.
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