Ex-colleague and friend Charu has started a blog - and its growing :).  Among many interesting and reflective posts is this one - highlighting two recent studies adopting new techniques (away from the time-tested focus group research we're all so accustomed to) conducted on the Young Indian Male.  Am going to get after her to provide an RSS feed - just makes keeping up with her reflections, rants and raves so much easier!  (Bold is mine).

Interesting study by the ad agency Rediffusion/DYR on the Young Indian male. The aim of this study was to identify distinct behavioural patterns among young Indian males and arrive at a core socio-cultural value that drives this species.

The analysis was loosely based on Geert Hofstede’s model of understanding differences across human societies and cultures, the emphasis being on rituals observed by the young Indian male. A sort of Y-I-Male study….

The findings are fairly commonplace and am sure come as no surprise to anyone : for instance letting hair down and spending time with friends, coming across as attractive about the opposite sex, need to stand out in a crowd. The core value that has been derived is ‘assertive gratification’. Okay, so what’s new.

What IS interesting is the methodology. This study is based on an analysis of the advertising consumed by the YI Male instead of primary research (after all, how much can the consumer “say” about himself that is both meaningful and credible). Says K Subramanian, planning director, Rediffusion | DYR, whose team undertook the study However, what is unique about what we have done is that while all previous studies tried to understand the consumer by looking and talking at him directly, we have studied him through the media and advertising he consumes.

Good point : our marketers and market research agencies should open their eyes to more insightful tools for understanding the consumer. Get over the ‘F’ hang-over – forget the focus group discussion and move on.

As an aside, cannot resist this one. Not to deride the Rediff attempt but just for information (ya, right). Subramanian also points our proudly in the interview (about the methodology) that this has never been attempted before. I have read this very interesting study by Victoria Alexander (1994) where she has studied advertisements of the 20th century with different representations of children. The idea was to understand socio-cultural changes over time; linking the data with societal trends regarding the importance of children in the family, child-rearing norms and ideologies etc.

Cannot find anything on the net on that but it can be accessed here : Alexander, Victoria. 1994. “The Image of Children in Magazine Advertising.” Communication Research December 21: 742-65.

Another such study A Semiotic Analysis of Magazine Ads for Men's Fragrances is presented here.

That apart, the rationale behind this kind of analysis is as follows : More than ever before, advertising has started influencing Indian society, and this target segment (the young Indian male in the 18-to-25-years bracket) consumes media and advertising voraciously, Subramanian points out. Our reasoning was that if advertising is a culture-forming stimulus, why not look at a sizeable body of advertising to see how advertising shapes and reflects today’s youth.

This brings me to an interesting question. Who came first : the advertiser or the audience ? Is media (cinema and advertising included) about cultivation or about representation? In other words, do ads portray such attitudes, symbols and rituals because the Y-I-male is like that…. Or is he that way because he is influenced by the advertising he is exposed to ?

Discovered a neat resource for new business ideas, concepts and innovations - i particularly like the way they operate - idea spotters and trend watchers !  A method i really think that can be of great value to any market research program, by complementing survey questionnaires and qualitative tools like focus groups and one-on-ones.  

About us: Springwise is a 'new business' intelligence firm, publishing reports and newsletters dedicated to new business ideas and business opportunities on a global scale. To ensure true 'glocal' coverage, the central office in Amsterdam liases with partners in New York and London, and stays in close contact with 600+ idea spotters in more than 50 countries worldwide, from China to Canada, and from Belgium to Brazil.
Springwise also collaborates with sister-publication TRENDWATCHING.COM, a leading trend spotting firm.

Who it is for: Entrepreneurs, management consultants, marketing managers, journalists, business development directors, researchers, analysts, VCs... Basically, anyone who wants to know which new and innovative ideas are out there and not to be missed, from the US to the UK, and from Sweden to South Korea.

Here's a sampling :

Coming to a cell phone near you

A while back we reported on Dutch cross-media company Media Republic's plans to launch an interactive soap opera for cell/mobile phones. Now fully operational, the series, which goes by the name of Jong Zuid, reaches its audience via mobile phones ('MMS'), the internet and MSN Messenger.

Soap addicts register online and receive two episodes a day, with each episode consisting of 6 pictures and accompanying texts. Jong Zuid's cast features famous Dutch soap celebs, with the script revolving around a group of youngsters living together in a dorm-like setting, resulting in plenty of drama, comedy, and everything else that interests hormone-driven teens.

In fact, with MSN Netherlands as a powerful partner, hundreds of thousands have already checked out the website, and tens of thousands have subscribed to a twice-daily fix of web or camera-phone based 'episodes'. Nice touch: subscribers can win a guest role, appearing with their favourite celebrity in one of the pics. How's that for GRAVANITY!?

So where's the money being made? Camera-phone subscribers get charged EUR 1.10 per week (approx USD 1.20), but the real euros/bucks come from a host of corporate sponsors, who pay Media Republic for product placements and the exclusive rights to Jong Zuid related contests and promotions.

Opportunities
Given the fact that: (a) the whole world loves soap operas, from the US to Europe to Australasia to South America; and (b) camera-phones overtook their visually-impaired counterparts in numbers sold in the first half of 2003, with Asia truly going camera-phone crazy (source: Strategy Analytics), Springwise is quite confident in declaring that MMS may have found one of its first global killer apps. So if you're in entertainment, telco or hawking your goods and services to the Always-On generation, hook up with pioneers like Media Republic, who are currently planning an international roll-out of the MMS series in cooperation with MSN.