Status: 06.09.2021 4:00 p.m.
Finances are rarely an issue at school. A new funk format on TikTok aims to help young people deal with their own money in a clever way – in a different way than the generation of their parents.
Investing money sensibly on the stock exchange or gambling wildly with individual stocks: What’s the difference? Katharina Wichelhaus is typing like crazy on her smartphone. “Buy, buy, buy. Oh no, the stock is going down now! Sell, sell!” It is the introduction to the latest video from “Your Money”, the new financial format on the TikTok platform that the Wireless-Editorial in Hessian Broadcasting launched. Wireless is the young offer from ARD and ZDF, which is aimed in digital media at people between 14 and 29 years of age.
Difficult topics, simply told
The first video of “Your Money” is about a difficult topic: investing in the stock market. Kati, 21 years young and one of two faces of the format, can be seen in the video – as is usual with TikTok – in several roles.
The more relaxed Kati reacts to the hectic typing on the smartphone: “Dude, what are you doing there?” A dialogue develops in which it is explained that short-term buying and selling of individual stocks is extremely risky – and a more long-term approach with broad index funds, so-called ETFs, may be more promising. Especially if you are not very familiar with stocks and the stock market.
The hectic Kati types slower and slower and looks more and more thoughtful the more she learns about the difference between investing and speculating. And then 35 seconds of video are already over.
Big effort for short videos
“On TikTok it always seems as if you shot it in five minutes, but that’s not true at all. There is a lot of effort behind it,” says Katharina Wichelhaus, who is experienced on the platform and there as an influencer “Katulka” with 1 , 4 million followers known. With “Your Money” the business editorial team of the Mr the editorial team.
Topics that were previously only prepared for a linear television audience are now also on a channel that is primarily used by very young people. The topics are quite demanding: taxes, insurance, old-age provision. The trick is: it is best not to even mention these bulky catchphrases or to use them with a lot of humor. For example, if liability insurance is declared, it is “clumsiness insurance.”
In direct exchange with the target group
The second face of the format, 18-year-old Rafaela Roza, sums up the approach as follows: “I’m not a financial expert. But I’m exactly in the target group, I’ve just graduated from high school, I’m about to start my studies. I’m currently sitting down with you the questions that the target group is likely to ask themselves. What is a tax return, how do I invest my money, what actually is child benefit? “
When developing the format, the core target group – young people between 16 and 22 years of age – was there all the time. Your feedback: Yes, we are fundamentally interested in these topics – but it would be nice if they were also fun.
This is not an easy task, but one that the “Your Money” team takes on. Take financial issues with humor and don’t pretend you know better. Kati puts it this way: “As you can see, Rafaela and I often have absolutely no idea. But that’s why we give us ‘Your Money’, so that we can find the answers to the questions we encounter in everyday life. “
A video every day that makes you want to hear about financial topics
The focus is specifically on topics for young women – such as the gender pay gap – and a non-academic target group. And of course topics that move the young target group. That this is also investing on the stock exchange is shown not least by this number: 600,000 people under 30 years of age in Germany alone became active on the stock exchange for the first time in 2020.
Neo brokers, trading apps: the market has started to move. This is also an expression of a changing world in which interest on savings no longer plays a role and private old-age provision is becoming increasingly important. To put it in the words of “Your Money”, “Don’t do it like Papa or Mom.” In other words: to continue to put the money very conservatively in the savings account, where there is no longer any interest, and to continue doing everything as the previous generations have done, does not seem the best solution. “Your Money” should therefore also encourage people to deal with money independently.
With the increase in the number of participants in the exchange, there is also a lot of activity on social media. There are endless financial formats, serious and less serious. The new financial format of Wireless above all has this goal: to stimulate interest in the important topic of finance – in a different way than the parents’ generation does.