Barry Judge // Updates from the CMO of Best Buy

Last year Best Buy sharpened its focus in corporate philanthropy to attend to the under-served segment of young teens. While we as a society focus a lot of time and financial resources on kids at the younger (<12) and older (>18) end of the spectrum, there’s ironically a lot less support for young people at arguably the most transformational time of their life, between the ages of 12 and 16. Coincidentally, those aged kids are pretty tuned into Best Buy, and pretty important to our business. So we launched @15, our ‘brand’ of philanthropy, and we’ve been directing all of our charitable giving and social change energy towards giving teens a voice and opportunities to pursue their dreams ever since.

We’ve filled up the last several months since @15’s inception with a lot of smart work, from directing grants to non-profits like Youth Venture and Sweat Equity Enterprises to commissioning national studies on the state of teens with organizations like Search Institute. All to help raise awareness and fuel teen strength.

For all of that ‘heavy’ lifting, though, one of the biggest attention-getters to the mission of @15 may very well come in the form of a conveniently-titled song by one of the hottest musical artists on the planet. Through our partnership with Taylor Swift, earlier this morning on www.at15.com we launched an exclusive acoustic version of her like-titled/minded song “Fifteen”. Teens and adults can stream a cut-down version of the track (also playing in Best Buy stores on our HDTV wall), and @15 members can purchase the full-length audio and video track, with $.50 of each download donated to the @15 Fund. The campaign will be supported through our newspaper insert, on-line, and through radio stations when the album-version of “Fifteen” is released in a couple weeks.

In golf there’s a saying that goes something like “they don’t ask how, just how many”. I see this creative leverage of a song, a singer, and some ’sizzle’ in a similar vein — it might not make the most intellectual case for why we as a society should be paying more attention to teens, but if Taylor’s light can shine a brighter light for those hidden in the shadows, then shine on.

You can check out the song, and everything else, on www.at15.com.