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In April, Toyota began paying to place its Scion on Whyville.net, an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8- to 15-year-olds. Toyota hopes Whyvillians will do two things: influence their parents’ car purchases and grow up to buy a Toyota themselves.
Ten days into the campaign, The New York Times reports, visitors to the site had used the word “Scion” in online chats more than 78,000 times; hundreds of virtual Scions were purchased, using “clams,” the currency of Whyville; and the community meeting place “Club Scion” was visited 33,741 times.
Toyota is paying Whyville - not with virtual clams - by the number of visitors on the site, but declined to name a figure. Whyville reaches an audience of 1.6 million.
In April, Toyota also launched its youth-oriented economy car Yaris with an integrated campaign that included 10-second “mobisodes” - video episodes on mobile devices - and interactive banner ad games.
Video games have become a daily activity in the lives of today’s children. A study released last year, which polled 4,000 boys and girls up to the age of 15, found that 61 percent play video games on a daily basis, and that 65 percent of those actually prefer to play their games on the PC rather than consoles and handhelds.
The power of younger consumers has grown stronger in recent years. According to research from Packaged Facts, 39 percent of parents of 10- and 11-year-olds say their children have a significant impact on brand purchases.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
