Brands, Not Marketers, Define Teens

NEW YORK Jocks. Cheerleaders. Stoners. Skinheads. Gangsters. To the marketers trying to reach them, that roster may sound more like the cast in a John Hughes movie or the roll call of Ferris Bueller's fan club. But at Adweek's What Teens Want conference held yesterday at the Marriott Marquis in New York, speakers made it clear that if marketers aren't thinking about how teens identify themselves within their peer set, their brands are going to miss the mark."There is no such thing as hitting teens [as a broad demographic]," said Malcolm Bird, svp of AOL Kids and Teens, who spoke as part of a panel on targeting teens in an online and mobile world. "You've got to decide what sort of teens and what demo you want to hit within the media."Today's teens think of brand names less as a hallmark of quality and more as a means of defining themselves."The brands allow them to express themselves politically," said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of The Harrison Group in Waterbury, Conn. "As individuals with a specific affinity for a style, as a badge of leadership."Taylor, who surveyed more than 3,000 13- to 24-year-olds for a study entitled "Worlds of Possibility," grouped teens into five categories. A-Listers, typically referred to as the popular kids or the in-crowd, are star athletes and honor roll students. American Dreamers were characterized as regular, hard working teens. Individual Thinkers are opinionated, intolerant but leaders. Outsiders feel estranged and suffer from low self-esteem. And JBs, short for Jack Blacks, are party kids who are less career oriented than their peers. Taylor said the common thread is "almost all of these kids believe they are someone else's leader." And that, marketers agreed, is where they need to come in. Advertising to teens cynical about marketing demands that kids believe they are "discovering" brands on their own. "They don't want to be told or pushed, they want to discover it for themselves," said Charlie Walk, an evp at Columbia Records. Rather than a broad-based campaign for new artist Teddy Geiger, Walk said the company would seed his music among teen influencers through giveaways and free performances. When word-of-mouth crescendos in teen chat rooms, Columbia will promote the record on a wider basis, Walk said.Carlos Scott, vp of marketing and corporate partnerships for guerilla marketing firm N-Vision, hooked up R&B singer Jarvis with OT Overtime, a deodorant for tween boys that was placed in music videos and mentioned in performances. Ron Vos, founder of Hi Frequency Marketing, uses an extensive network of teen influencers who are rewarded for promoting brands to their friends and acquaintances. Both were members of the conference's Grass-Roots and Guerilla Marketing panel. Still others are firm believers in creating online branded content for teens or reaching young buyers through their cell phones. Rich Nelson, president of Trendum USA, advocated staying abreast of text messaging slang and codes so that text messaged ads seem more authentic. Bird, of AOL Kids and Teens, suggested creating more than five 15-second executions for ads that air when teens log onto sites or download content because they visit their favorite sites several times a day."This is the first generation that is going to adopt content generation on their mobiles," said Bird. In addition to buying ring tones, Web-enabled phones will make it possible to watch video clips and shop via cell phone, members of the online marketing panel said.But for all the studies and speculation, members of the teen panel said TV, magazine and outdoor ads were most likely to influence their purchasing, and those methods continue to pose rudimentary challenges. Said one 16-year-old: "I like the Vonage ad where the guy is running on the treadmill and falls down. It's funny, but I still don't know what Vonage is."

Brand Marketing

Brands, Not Marketers, Define Teens

Deanna Zammit

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Deanna Zammit