What is a consumption cocktail?

Mar 23, 2009

Is Monday too soon to be thinking about cocktails?  I say no.  This is PR and of course, all we crazy PR hedonists do is booze up.  So as I poured my first Hendrick’s cocktail of the week (respectfully 1 minute after 12 noon), an interesting article by Fi Bendall caught my eye.  It describes, among other really interesting points, the media consumption of her Gen Y teenage kids (16 and 14 years old).

“The teens are using new media at every available opportunity, always on in the background is the web, laptops sitting next to the mobile phone that is sms’ing and iPod plugged in one ear.”

This describes what I call a CONSUMPTION COCKTAIL.

It’s not limited to teens and new media.  All ages do this.  Have you noticed you do this yourself? 

You’re at home on the computer, flicking between Facebook and Google and you’ve got one ear tuned to the TV on the background.  If something interesting comes up you watch for a few minutes then it’s back to downloading a podcast for tomorrow’s bus ride, while you continue to sms your friend about the weekend.

That’s a consumption cocktail – everything is thrown into the mix at the same time.  We are, after all, media animals and as our access increases so does our appetitie for information and entertainment.

What are the implications? 

More channels = less time per channel = multiple channels at once = attention split between channels = smaller and smaller audience segments = marketing / PR / advertising hell?

Not really.  It just means we have to be smarter, faster and better at connecting with people via things that are relevant and remarkable.  Makes for thirsty work…

Posted by Renee Creer

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 4:16 pm. It is filed under Ideas, PR and tagged with Generation Y, media channels, media consumption, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.