Teenage Marketing Agency
Teenage marketing can be tricky. UK Ofcom estimated that the average 3-4-year-old spends approximately three hours in front of a TV screen per day. This assumption rises to four hours for the 5-7-year-old category, 4,5 hours for the 8-11’s and 6.5 hours for teenagers.
As you may expect, older children were found to have spent as much time online as watching television. In addition, up to 43% of teens use the Internet in their bedrooms. (Although I’m sure we all know of a two-year-old able to operate and iPhone!)
Phones
Teens and young adults communicate through their phones, whether it’s Whatsapp, social media, or the simple text (although now it seems medieval). Choosing appropriate teenage marketing tools like optimising the screen resolution on your website so it’s mobile friendly can be a great benefit to your company. Even better is finding PR placement in the online magazines and media they like to read.
Music
Have you ever noticed how loudly your teenager listens to music? Silly question I’ll let the ‘TURN IT DOOOOOWN’ yells at the ceiling speak for themselves. Teens are the biggest buying segment for recorded music and today with applications such as Spotify and iTunes on their portable devices- everyone’s a DJ. So, have you thought about providing sponsorship for music downloads or tie-ins for live events?
Social Media
Only 8% of UK teens don’t use social media, the other 92% like to socialise with their friends away from prying eyes. The marketing implication for this is that you should engage teenagers through social pages or accounts the can follow whilst ensuring integrated product placement.
The News
Contrary to popular belief our children do have thoughts and processes outside of themselves. The news is important but printed newspapers and magazines are in decline due to the sheer amount of online content available for free! Regarding this to reach your teen market, build your brand for the long term whilst meeting financial constraints, offering discount subscriptions is always a great place to start.
Know your customers.
It’s difficult to pinpoint a person when modern day society is made up of nothing short of a kaleidoscope of people, each one with a completely different set of needs and wants to the next.
The one thing that stands solid in every market regardless of the economy? The parent and teen. So I suppose the right question is ‘how do I persuade a parent to part with money on behalf of their children?’ The answer is PR!
Let’s go back to the pretty open market of Social Media. It’s ripe for the taking. Many don’t use it properly and it is growing at a remarkable rate with no signs of slowing. It can be difficult to pinpoint a solid demographic in social media. Difficult, but by no means impossible. What we need to do is to build a circumstantial and content-based understanding of our online audience.
To build up a profile of a typical parent and teen we need to look at the content they characteristically produce. By analysing this we can either eliminate or incorporate content that appeals to our audience.
What we do know is adults and teens use social media very differently. The main motivation for teens to use any social media platform is to share funny stories, jokes, experiences or images. In contrast to this, adults tend to use it to project aspirational images. Teens are also much more likely to use social media more frequently and their posting is much less restrained.
The key is for us to both understand and utilise this evidence to provide quality content that will be shared.
Appealing to teens:
From a practical perspective we need to find everyday situations that we can spin to be amusing. For example the launch of a new food brand would do well in the teen area, as there are so many food related situations you can ensure people relate to.
Selling to the parent:
To appeal to the parents we would need to feed content that supports the image they wish to portray.
If we continue down the route of selling food, we would do well to focus on the health benefits, recipes and encouraging people to tweet their attractive looking meals. This allows them to show cooking skills and project the successful image they want others to see. We cannot forget that teens care more about ‘the likes,’ so the opinion of their peers is the overriding consideration.
Lets look at a case study.
Family favourite, Birds Eye, pulled its fish fingers television advert. This was after concerns that it could encourage children to jump into cold water.
The advert in question starred a boy and man who jumped into the sea as a voiceover says, “Captain Birds Eye loves the simple things, like jumping into cold water on a hot day with his grandson.” A campaign group was later set up following the death of a 14-year-old who died from cold water shock after jumping into the River Wear with friends. The group claimed that the advert was inappropriate. A spokesman for Birds Eye said,“We take all appropriate steps to ensure that our advertising is suitable to air in the UK and observe safety guidelines during the production of all our advertising. Unfortunately, our research and testing did not raise this specific issue. As a family brand, we decided to take swift action and we wish campaigners every success in highlighting this important issue.”
So, from a PR and marketing standpoint, where does this leave Birds Eye?
When launching a campaign to the public, thorough research and the use of focus groups should be correctly implemented. This is especially poignant when marketing to teenagers
In fairness to Birds Eye, it is unlikely that this isolated incident would have been raised by many in a focus group. However, the water safety campaign launched by Durham Council following the death of Cameron Gosling should have been picked up by the research team. A quick Google search of related terms immediately shows the far reach of the campaign and the associated YouTube videos. The Birds Eye PR team should have considered their target audience, something you are probably sick of hearing about if you regularly read this blog.
What can your business learn from this?
When promoting your goods and services you will benefit from the assistance of a professional PR and marketing team that understand the importance of research and target markets.
If you are looking to widen your reach, gain new customers or improve your reputation, speak to our teenage marketing agency. We work with a wide variety of clients globally.