I wonder if this is a change due to the economy or if this has always been the case. One thing that was really a shock was:
Sixty-five percent of the teens and young adults surveyed felt seeing a brand on TV created a sense of quality, though how much varied from country to country. Seventy-seven percent of respondents in India thought TV equaled brand quality, followed by residents of the UK, US, Japan and Germany.
Could this mean that mass marketing, like TV, still plays an important role in how people choose products? Well, that's a horse of a different color, isn't it? The balance was that the internet made it easier to find brands. As they say in the article, it's important to get your message out on multiple channels.
If you want your brand to be associated with young people, then image isn’t everything, at least not according to a study by MTV Networks, the long-time arbiter of cool—and what’s hot—among young audiences.For the study, Internet users ages 12 to 24 in five countries—Germany, India, Japan, the UK and the US—were surveyed.
According to respondents ages 18 to 24, the most popular features of a brand were good quality, trustworthiness and workability (emphasis mine) —three traits not usually associated with the stereotypical image of free-wheeling youth.
