Reaching out to ‘da yoots!

Checking in from the wonderful Y Pulse Mashup in San Francisco.

It’s actually quite a unique conference and considerably different compared to the events we normally produce. The whole point of the event is to find out how to market to a very unusual demographic, teens and tweens. As a father of two teens, it definitely resonates with me how powerful the opinion of teenagers can be on the buying decisions of adults.

What’s actually even more interesting is the attendees and sponsors are companies that you may not have ever heard of, but I bet your kid has. For instance, as I type this in our booth, I’m sitting next to Ashley Qualls.  CEO and Founder of whateverlife.com. Whateverlife is a website designed, mostly with young women in mind and it provides layouts for social networking sites like myspace, facebook, etc. The site is funded completely by ad revenue and sees up to 250,000 visitors in a day…some people credit Ashley and her site with propelling the Jonas Brothers (or Jo Bros) and Lily Allen into the stratosphere because they were played regularly on whateverlife.  All of this is fine and dandy, but what makes it spectacular is that Ashley is just 18 years old (like literally, just turned 18). She started whateverlife when she was just 14 and grew it into a multi-million dollar business. She is a very grounded, smart person…it’s funny to think of her as “just a kid”.

I think of what she has accomplished at 18 and I fondly remember being fired from my paper route delivering the North Country Sun when I was 14 because I kept dumping the papers in the garbage as opposed to delivering them…apparently, that’s a no no.

But, maybe there’s hope for me yet? Afterall, I used to look like this:

And to tie things together, in about 2 minutes…MC Hammer is speaking…he wore pants just like that and look where he is!

Anyway…really interesting things going on here in San Fran and as a business owner it got me to thinking…am I maximizing my revenue net? Are you?

Maybe I should be looking to my kids to see what they think? Who knows, they or one of their friends might be the next big thing!

Anyway…more later, check out Y Pulse and whateverlife…very cool stuff!

 

UPDATED: 

So, after I typed this, I got to meet the man himself…

I swear, had I known he was gonna do the 2 symbol, I would have done the L symbol…

2 Legit…2 Legit 2 Quit…HEY HEY!!!