Targeting The Demographic
Social Status and Brand Loyalty
Products and brands with Social Power encompass the notion that “Corporate cool hunters are searching for teens that have the respect, trust, and admiration of their friends.” The American Psychological Association said, “Advertisers understand the teen's desire to be "cool," and manipulate it to sell their wares, a concept that's been offered to marketers by psychologists including James McNeal, PhD. Marketers assume a silent role as manipulators and the role they manage to play is not only in the purchases of teens but also in the social statuses of teens. A key aspect to youth marketing or any targeted demographic marketing is that these products are supposed to fulfill the needs or desires of the consumer. A large portion of sales promotion is dedicated to accomplishing this. However, according to Ainsworth Anthony Bailey of University of Toledo in "The Interplay of Social Influence and Nature of Fulfillment: Effects on Consumer Attitudes," not much of this research has focused on non-fulfillment of promotional promises which in turn, breaks the trust of the consumer and hurts the entire image of the brand and its product.
The role of brand loyalty and/or belonging to a brand becomes a primary act for the young consumers. Promotion is always positive; commodities are presented as the road to happiness. In short, advertising uses existing values and symbols rather than reflecting them. Child psychologist, Allen Kanner states that, “The problem, is that marketers manipulate that attraction, encouraging teens to use materialistic values to define who they are and aren't.” It’s key that we acknowledge the need for teens to not only identify but to let the brand identify them. It’s what feeds into the notion that Marketing and Branding effects teen consumerism. Salancik & Pfeffer's (1978) Social information processing theory addresses mechanisms by which peers influence individuals' behavior and attitudes. According to this theory, social information consists of comments and observations made by people whose views an individual considers relevant. The literature on social influence suggests that this could impact consumers' perceptions.
Classroom
According to the Media Awareness Network, a huge space where young adults can be targeted is in the setting of education or classroom. Whether it be through sponsored health educational assemblies, or as simple as the vending machines in the lunch room, or contests/incentive programs, and the companies that supply the schools with new technologies such as Mac computers. The academic setting becomes a prime marketing tool in reaching our youth because the classroom provides a captive audience for any product or brand to be modeled in front of. One example that the Media Awareness Network provides to explain how the academic environment can be used to silently speak and market to the youth is contests and incentive programs like the Pizza Hut reading incentives program in which children receive certificates for free pizza if they achieve a monthly reading goal. Similarly, Campbell's Labels for Education project, in which Campbell provides educational resources for schools in exchange for soup labels collected by students.
Internet
According to the director of Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive, "This is a medium for advertisers that is unprecedented... there's probably no other product or service that we can think of that is like it in terms of capturing kids' interest." Advertisers reach the young demographic by eliciting personal information. It's as easy as getting them to fill out quick, simple surveys prior to playing these games. They offer prizes such as T-shirts for filling in "lengthy profiles that ask for purchasing behavior, preferences and information on other family members." Advertisers, then take the information they obtain from these polls and surveys to "craft individualized messages and ads" in order to draw and hook them into a world centered around a certain product or brand. The ads that surround the individual in these "cyber worlds" are meant to keep a firm grip on each individual. It provides the setting for them to be completely consumed by the advertisers messages, products, and brands around them.
These games are not just games. They're "advergames", CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports for "Gotta Have It: The Hard Sell To Kids." Advergames allow for marketers to incorporate brands and products into a game-like setting where the child playing it, is exposed constantly to these brands and products. A 10-year old girl who was interviewed by CBS, says she can score with Skittles, race with Chips Ahoy or hang out with SpongeBob.
"You think about that 30-second commercial, basically a lot of those games are pretty fun to play and kids really get engaged in them," Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, a group that has successfully pushed for limits on TV advertising to kids, says. "So really it ends up becoming a 30-minute commercial."
Kids In An Adult World
The influence that our youth have on purchases made in a household are extremely high, shockingly, even on high-end items such as what vehicle the family decides to purchase. For example, one study estimated that children influenced $9 billion worth of car sales in 1994. One car dealer explains: "Sometimes, the child literally is our customer. I have watched the child pick out the car." According to, James U. McNeal, author of "Kids as Customers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children," car manufacturers cannot afford to ignore the children in their marketing. Nissan is one of many companies know to do this. They sponsor the American Youth Soccer Organization and a traveling geography exhibit in order to promote and get eyes on their brand name and logo in child-friendly settings.
There's analysis of the process of the development of a child and how it relates to how marketers know they can have a great deal of power in the field of persuasion on them at such young ages. At the age of five or six, children have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality and make-believe from lying. They do not distinguish programs from ads, and may even prefer the ads. Between seven and ten years-old, children are most vulnerable to "televised manipulation". At age seven, the child can usually distinguish reality from fantasy, and at nine, he or she might suspect deception. This could come from any personal experience where products have turned out not to be as advertised. However, they cannot fully decipher this logic and continue to have "high hopes" for future products produced by a particular brand. By the age of ten, the individual starts to have a cynical perception of ads, in that "ads always lie". Around eleven or twelve, a toleration of adults lying in advertisements starts to develop. At this stage, it's the true coming of the adolescent's "enculturation" into a system of social hypocrisy.
Product Placement
Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the good or service is featured.
Read more about this topic: Youth Marketing