»
U.S. college students (ages 18-30) prefer to spend their hard-earned money on brands they perceive to be socially responsible, according to findings released today from Alloy Media + Marketing’s 5th annual College Explorer Study, conducted by Harris Interactive. The study found that, while humor is good and big names still sell, students prefer an honest and effective social responsibility campaign to celebrity endorsements when it comes to spending.
This year’s college enrollment is the largest on record, overall spending has jumped by $8 billion and their discretionary spending power has grown 12 percent to $46 billion.
“The college student market is now well over 17 million strong , and continues to grow in size and importance for marketers as the considerable influence they’ve gained in the past few years as technology early adopters bleeds into other areas, like social responsibility,” says Dana Markow, Vice-President, Youth and Education Research at Harris Interactive. “Watch for the ‘greening’ of the college market and their $182 billion in aggregate spending power to have a big effect on brand positioning and campaigns in the coming year.”
When asked about factors that drive their purchase decisions, 33 percent prefer brands that give back to the community, are environmentally safe, or are connected to a cause. Together these socially responsible characteristics surpassed paying more for a brand with a great image (16 percent) or preference for a brand used by celebrities (2 percent) by wide margins in their influence on discretionary spending. Substantially, one in four students has purchased a product this year specifically because it was socially conscious.
Earlier this year, a survey of 18-34-year-old college students and recent grads found that online advertising does indeed motivate them to make a purchase, and that the age group spends a significant amount of time online conducting research before purchasing - and when they do purchase, it’s tends to be online, with 98 percent of college students saying they have made a purchase of a product or service online.
Though off-air online and experiential advertising grew modestly as a part of the overall radio revenue pie, and election-related political ads increased in Q3, total radio ad revenues were down 9% to $4.97 billion for Q3 and down 10% for…
Glamour magazine is running its photo of Britney Spears not only on the cover of the U.S. edition, but on the covers in seven other countries, as well.
Britney will grace Russia, Sweden and Greece’s editions of Glamour, among others.…
Titan Worldwide has signed a five-year deal with the Delaware River Port Authority to manage out-of-home advertising for the Port Authority Transit corp.
The contract covers advertising on PATCO’s rail service and stations between Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, writes Mediaweek.…
Publicis has acquired full-service agency W&K Communications, continuing its Asia expansion that began several years ago.
W&K will be pulled under the umbrella of Publicis’s Burnett agency network, and will be renamed Leo Burnett Beijing Advertising, writes Adweek.
Other recent Publicis…
With only four weeks separating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, Cyber Monday One (December 1) and Cyber Monday Two (December 
may command a greater share of online sales than they have in years past - thus increasing the importance…
Top American non-luxury auto brands received higher ratings and less negative comments from online consumers than competing Japanese brands, according to an analysis of consumer opinions collected from automotive review websites by Biz360, MarketingCharts reports.
The research, which aggregated a year’s…
