JIP, the Afrikaans youth supplement in Beeld and Die Burger with a readership of over one million has a new and engaging online presence – and is slowly coming to define the Afrikaans youth culture.
“Our teenage target audience want to air their views, see what others are saying and access news and reviews at anytime and anywhere. Online enables these possibilities with the result that we have a constant buzz of teenage voices,” said Riëtte Grobler, editor of JIP.
She believes this activity indicates the needs of the unique Afrikaans teenage market to potential advertisers.
“As far as we know, JIP is the only website for teenagers in the Afrikaans language not aimed at parents, schools or teachers. This places us in the unique position to really make a difference where it’s needed,” said Grobler.
JIP is considered the authority on popular culture, local music and the latest ‘cool’ in South Africa.
“Teenagers can be overlooked as a potential market, but in reality, they are the largest consumers of media. What’s more, 76% of JIP Die Burger’s readers are in the LSM 7- 10 group and 91% of JIP Beeld readers are in the LSM 7 – 10 category,” says Mike van Eck, Ads24’s digital business manager (and the national sales team behind JIP).
He adds that for brands and advertisers, JIP presents a unique opportunity to connect with tech-savvy individuals who are “future custodians of their brands.”
Meanwhile, however, teachers use the JIP website as a tool to find articles to use in their classrooms. “We find that the website serves an instructive role: the writers of school textbooks, especially in Afrikaans (for first and second language teaching purposes), use the website as a resource for content and refer to the site in their printed publications. Learners use the website individually too,” Grobler says.
To meet the millennial generations’ demand to interact, JIP provides many channels to access the brand including a website (www.jip.co.za), Facebook-page (www.facebook.com/Jip), Twitter (@JIPcoza), MXit and regular sponsored events and competitions.
The JIP website reaches 36 066 unique browsers and delivers 92 971 page views each month (Source: Google Analytics, January 2012). The JIP mobisite, is also slowly gaining momentum.
Not surprisingly, JIP has a strong social media following with 2 062 Twitter followers and 7 284 Facebook fans (as of November 2012).
