A 15 year old intern’s report has been published by Morgan Stanley and has generated six times more responses than the team’s usual research! Teens see adverts on websites as “extremely annoying and pointless” the report says, but “most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing”.

Morgan Stanley’s European media analysts asked Matthew Robson, an intern from a London school, to describe his friends’ media habits.

His report, that dismissed traditional web advertising and described Twitter as pointless, proved to be “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen – so we published it”, said Edward Hill-Wood, executive director of Morgan Stanley’s European media team.

“Most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing, as often it creates humorous and interesting content. Teenagers see adverts on websites (pop ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless, as they have never paid any attention to them and they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them” said Matthew Robson.

The response to this report was enormous. “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” said E. Hill Wood.

This report underlines something that we know well at Eyeka; traditional advertising reaches less and less people on the internet. Instead, viral content and participative marketing is step by step replacing common advertising channels by engaging consumers. Thank you Matthew for your report!

Sources:
- the FT’s front page story
- the full copy of the research note written by Matthew Robson