Creating audience report slides has been one of my main jobs during my time at AccuWeather so far. To create these slides, I use ComScore to help me build a story for each company. I’ve explored many different verticles and partnerships, here are some listed below:

Fabl Presentations

Another set of projects I’ve been working on is the creation and development of Fabl stories and presentations. Initially, I started working with Fabl to experiment with layouts and templates. This turned into making mock presentations for some of the following verticles and partnerships:

My overall project for this summer is to identify opportunities and gaining audience insights on Generations Y & Z. My research revolves around behaviors for web, apps, weather information, and social media.

By using this research, I’m able to create strategies in how AccuWeather can stay relevant to these audiences and how we can be better integrated in their daily engagements and activities.

E-Marketer & ComScore Research - Gen Y & Z Outcomes

Gen Y & Z kids are known as incredibly sophisticated, technology savvy, immune to most traditional marketing and sales pitches…as they not only grew up with it all, they’ve seen it all and been exposed to it all since early childhood. They’re educated, ethnically-diverse, less brand loyal, digitally advanced over multiple platforms, short-attention-spanned, and globally driven.

Their spending dollars go towards products and services that come from direct consumer responses - word of mouth carries far with these generations. Influencers, product ratings, online reviews are essential considering these generations deeply don’t trust media, with a ComScore index of 254.

Beyond just general research to help form strategies, I dove into specific behaviors that relate back to AccuWeather, such as: social media interaction, web behavior, and weather information:

They check social media dozens - and even hundreds of times a day. On any given day, teens in the United States spend about nine hours using media for their enjoyment. Not only are they checking social media, but also news and weather. You can see from the EMarketer report on the left, social media and weather rank in the top 4 web behaviors in these generations.

Strategies & Ways to Implement Research

"Authentically mobile” experiences

A major value amongst these generations is transparency. Gen Y & Z are curious about behind the scenes, company cultural values, and a more personal connection. Staying up to date on current reforms and movements, utilizing social media, live video streams, behind-the-scenes approaches gives these audiences an authentic and personal approach.

Capitalizing on Voice Search & Alexa

Through my EMarketer research, there was a lot of emphasis on voice search. In the upcoming future, voice search will become too widespread for marketers to ignore. It’s essential we capitalize on Alexa and voice search across all platforms. Not only will this approach enhance our digital platforms, but it will also make them more user-friendly by supporting the “on-the-go millennial” user.

Aesthetic & User-Friendly Design

A lot of research emphasises that these generations are on-the-go, short-attention-spanned, don’t read large blurbs of text or listen to long content, and are quick on first impressions. In order for our generation y and x users to come and stay with us, our platforms has to be both functional and fast. We can’t waste our users time or effort with too many pages, pop-ups or clicks to get to popular destinations. In order to streamline this, we must analyze and understand our users click-path, we can look at things like:

• On what page(s) do Millennials most often land?
• For how long do they stay on those landing pages?
• Do they exit your website on any specific page(s)?
• What page(s) have the longest session duration?

Virtual and augmented reality is the future of technology and digital platforms. Not only is it advancing at a fast rate, but it’s also attracting the younger and digitally inclined mobile and web users. AccuWeather can be the leading platform that help mainstream consumers become even more accustomed to the notion of AR graphics in nearly every environment in our daily lives.
Using VR in our events and presentations can make AccuWeather look and feel younger, and it also supports the idea of our technology and services being advanced and continuously fine-tuned. AR can be used more for in-app and weather forecast platforms. Without getting too carried away at first, since this technology is up and coming we don’t want to over-saturate our content.

Consumer Voices Carry Far for Millennials

In an era of incredibly accessible and instantaneous communication through social media and mobile devices, Millennials constantly talk to each other. Charismatic, entertaining or persuasive representations of brands do not seem to affect Millennials. Rather, this demographic is searching for honest, genuine interactions and experiences that are not benefitting from the positive message. AccuWeather can invest in influencers or a platform for consumer reviews that re-establish our credibility and reliability.

US - 228.8 Million
Canada - 23.6 Million

CANADA VS US - SMARTPHONE USERS

US - 229.2 Million
Canada - 26.1 Million

CANADA VS US - SOCIAL MEDIA USERS

US - 199.2 Million
Canada - 21.8 Million

CANADA GEN Y & Z GENERAL DATA

Ads in email messages were trusted by 49% of Canadian millennials, compared with 36% of total adults. On websites, it was 37% vs. 29%. For online video, 42% vs. 27%. And in social media, 37% vs. 21%.

There were 868,335 students in Canada ages 20 to 24 during the 2015-2016 school year, according to Statista, which was more than a third (35%) of the population in that age range.