No rocket science here. Catching them young is just the smartest thing to do in today's market conditions. From an acquirer's/initiator's perspective, its a tradeoff between going for relative inexperience and getting an excellent return on investment. It does work most of the times but has the potential to backfire majorly.

I presented this idea in a different context at a contest held in my firm. The idea found great acceptance with the people who matter and that helped me win the contest. Even in the context of advertisements being aired in India today, this concept is finding favor among agencies.

In TV advertising, we have seen a bit too much importance being given to celebrity influence in the past. I am not saying that trend has completely reversed but we sure are seeing many more exceptions today, than we have in the recent past. There are four main ingredients of a good TV-advert - The Idea, recall value of the ad, resonance with brand tagline and traction achieved through celebrity influence.

The exceptions that we have seen in recent times are with respect to more importance being given to the first three ingredients in comparison to the last one. End result - Savings in CAPEX because payments to spencer celebrities are avoided --> these can be redirected to improving inputs in the other three areas. Effectively expenses are being redirected towards the more important aspects related to products and their promotions such as - improving the product face, product related communications, inbound and out-bound marketing initiatives.

You wish to see a real-time implementation of this concept? - Watch the recently aired Adidas-IPL ads

The campaign features the following adidas athletes:
Sandeep Sharma, Age 16: A right-arm fast medium bowler, Sundeep represented the India Under-19 squad at the 2010 World Cup in New Zealand.
Gaurav Jathar, Age 19: A left-arm spinner from Mumbai, Gaurav toured with the Under-19 India squad to Australia in 2009
Sahil Kukreja, Age 24: Right hand batsman, Sahil plays for Kings XI Punjab in the IPL and for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy.

Source:http://www.adclubbombay.com

I have expressed my liking for one of the ads, the Adidas fielder, here. In this post, I shall cover the Adidas bowler - Sandeep Sharma (Rt Arm medium Fast, Age:16). You might want to remember this 16 year old's face. Maybe, in a couple of years, you would find Pepsi, Coke and the others in the bandwagon queueing up to sign this guy up. The only difference would be : then this kid would charge a premium just to show his face in their advertisements.

If only Coke/Pepsi had followed the Catch them Young strategy, they'd have had more cash to introduce more variants in its fluids - Thats their bread and butter business isnt it?