Can 12V Recaptivate The Youth Market?

TWICE: What kind of marketing is needed to reinvigorate the interest of 16- to 24-year-olds in car audio?

Larry Rougas, Pioneer: Kids are not listening to radio and not reading the newspaper. We have to go where they are: analyze and attack from a new angle. We also have to put the focus back to car audio. I'm not sure it means having the weekend sound off, but maybe a different version or something that supports NOPI or SEMA. If our accounts want to do it, we want to support it.

Reinvigorating the youth market is a big priority. The kids now are into gaming and iPod and the Internet. It will be one of our top priorities.

Steve Witt, Alpine: There's roughly 70 million of these Gen Y'ers so the market is as big as the baby boomers. It's a great opportunity. However, it's clearly evident the old ways of marketing car audio are no longer working. We have to show these consumers that car audio is evolving quickly into digital media playback … and full seamless integration with control of portable devices is critical. I can point to Alpine's share growth as testament to why this is so important to this particular demographic.

Tom Malone, Audiovox: The car audio industry needs to stop calling itself the car audio industry. Not when much of a dealer's revenue comes from multimedia, mobile video, navigation, satellite radio and, of course, OE integration products. We narrow the consumer perception of the dealer when we continue to reinforce the concept that car audio is their core business.