myYearbook and Pizco
myYearbook
myYearbook is an online hybrid of a typical school yearbook (packed with superlatives, autographs, senior will and testaments and pictures) and a doodled-upon Trapper Keeper (covered in cheesy poems, quizzes, popularity rankings and secret crushes). Packed with all sorts of popcorn and silly time-wasters for teens, the style is cute and cheeky, very innocent and sort of what an idealized childhood would look like.
Common wisdom about marketing to children is that tweens aspire to be teens, teens aspire to be college students and college students aspire to be 20-somethings. A site like myYearbook celebrates age-appropriate high school behavior. Maybe it’s becoming acceptable to act your age and not grow up too soon. Perhaps it’s a reaction against myriad cultural forces that expose kids to too much, too soon. The time may be ripe to experiment with appealing to kids on the basis of what they are, not what they aspire to be.
Piczo
Estimated unique monthly visitors: 203,000
Similar to CondeNet's flip, Piczo is a photo-collaging and creativity site where young girls celebrate their individuality and identity by designing their own webpage layouts, manipulating photos, adding home videos, creating speech bubbles in pictures and, of course rating, and ranking the pages of other girls. The tool set is a sort of Photoshop Junior, allowing you to resize, edit, change fonts, et cetera.
A splashy, technicolor yawn of fluorescent colors, glitter writing, prom pictures and oh-so-cutely misspelled words, Piczo neatly supplants the poster collages you used to see on girls' bedroom walls.
Piczo is evidence of the hunger and facility for creative self-expression that the current teenage generation possesses. Our future consumers will have grown up functioning as amateur art directors, copywriters and designers, which raises some interesting questions. How will we communicate -- verbally and visually-- with a creatively savvy audience who grew up "marketing" their own "brand" online? In what ways can marketers tap into their talent? How will their taste for self-invention affect their willingness to buy into a brand’s vision on their behalf?
