Nation's leading research on teens: Teen Research Unlimited  

Read the legal requirements of ads, FTC website.

E-mail Kristine Heidke with questions or comments on this story.

On Journalism home

Teen dollars prove elusive for marketers

This Bongo jean advertisement, from the March 2003 issue of Seventeen magazine,  uses language and imagery to draw the teen market. (Ad courtesy of dadsanddaughters.org)

American teens spent $115 billion of their own money and an additional $60 billion of their parents’ money in 2003 making them a highly sought after consumer group.

American teens have a spending power greater than the gross domestic product of Portugal, Greece and Finland.  Marketers have tried various methods to attract the teen dollar, each with varying amounts of success, according to a study done by Teen Research Unlimited (TRU), a marketing research company based in Illinois.

“[Teens have] a massive disposable income and considerable spending power, plus they often feel they need brands to prop up their egos,” said Robert Kozinets, an assistant professor of marketing at University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Youth between the ages of 13 and 19 are considered teens and they have qualities other than spending power that make them attractive to marketers.  They are eager to look a certain way and are more likely to experiment and buy new products.  Some marketers see teens as an unlimited pool of revenue while others say they are too savvy and educated for marketing to work.  Teens are a viable and profitable source for companies that are doing everything in their power to attract them. Some experts, and teens themselves, say marketers may have gone too far in their pursuit to capture the teen market.

Liz Carroll is the owner of Carroll and Co., a marketing, advertising and public relations firm in Madison.  She says that the teen audience shops independently of its parents and therefore is more likely to spend money on impulse.  Some teens have been given pre-paid credit cards by their parents, which Carroll says is another reason the teen market is so powerful.  They have the money and they are willing to spend it.

 Teens are spending an average of $50 a week on clothing, music and other forms of entertainment, according to a press release from NPD Fashionworld, a marketing firm based in New York that focuses on the clothing industry.

“They have become a powerful consumer group, and advertisers have responded to that,” Carroll said.

In response to the teen market, advertisers have changed their game plan in order to encourage teens to spend money on specific products.  Some previously invented methods have become less effective because teens today have been exposed to more marketing than previous generations, and therefore are predisposed to recognizing advertising methods.  Kozinets says the best way to advertise to teens is to reuse old ideas in new ways.   

“It’s more about applying the methods at hand to this new group, understanding how their needs and their communication modes are different, and then hitting them with relevant messages in places they’ll see them,” Kozinets said.

One of the most important aspects in advertising to teens is the location of an ad.  Putting ads on radio, television and Internet are the best places to catch teens’ attention, according to Carroll. 

In addition, Kozinets says that advertisers have found new, inventive places to run ads in order to specifically attract teens.  These include placing ads in video games, through cell phones and in movies by way of product placement.  Companies are also using a new method of promoting products through contests involving teen oriented television shows.

Today the marketing atmosphere is increasingly crowded with ads and messages and because of this, it is necessary to create new advertising methods in order to catch teens’ attention.  Many marketing companies have thrown in their hand to try to find the most effective method of advertising to teens.  One of the more popular methods is target marketing.

Target marketing zeroes in on a specific group of consumers and creates advertisements that appeal primarily to that group, according to OnPoint, a marketing and promotional company based in California.  This method of marketing is often used in regard to the teen audience.  Advertisement campaigns often focus the product, design and location of an ad based on what will appeal primarily to teen buyers.

“Good marketing adjusts to the needs, concerns and relevant language of the people it wants to reach,” Kozinets said.

For teens this is especially true.  Kelsey Weichel, 16, says the advertisements she remembers most, and therefore the products she buys, speak her language.  She says she is especially drawn to those ads that address topics related to her and not her parents.

“I like ads that talk to me about topics that interest me and not the ones that are for old people,” Weichel said.

Rob Callender, the senior trends manager at TRU, says the most effective ads for teens use humor or feature animals.  Kozinets adds that advertisements that use teenagers’ language and slang, and those that offer teens realistic products at reasonable prices also do well. 

Weichel works at the Dairy Queen on Menominee Street in Eau Claire primarily to pay for things her parents say they will not buy for her.  According to Jennifer Mannino, the senior project director of marketing at Fashionworld, about 35 percent of American teens have regular jobs.  Weichel works to buy the clothing and music she wants.  She says she got a job to be independent of her parents and she did not want to ask them for everything she wanted.

“I wanted to buy the things I wanted and not the things my parents thought I needed,” Weichel said.

Companies are especially trying to sell products such as clothing, electronics, movies, cell phones, skin care systems and makeup to teens because they are popular among that age group. According to the Federal Trade Commission, an organization in charge of providing an efficient and harmful-restriction free consumer market, teens purchase 17 percent of movie tickets nationwide, although they account for only 10 percent of the population.  Teens also listen to music for an average of two and a half hours a day and 42 percent of teens say they play video games daily, according to the FTC.

“Teens are funding most of their own clothing, music and entertainment purchases while mom and dad keep them connected by paying for Internet and cell phones,” Mannino said.

For advertisers, Weichel represents a consumer market they want to tap because it is lucrative.  In order to do this, marketers need to know what appeals to teens and how to effectively market to them.  To do this marketers and advertisers use various methods including focus groups, participant observation, surveys and more persuasive methods including target marketing, according to the FTC.

The current teen market is notoriously hard to market to because their generation has been exposed to advertising in various forms since childhood and can recognize advertising techniques.  Because of this the teen market has a tendency to tune out advertisements.  To combat this, some marketers are trying less noticeable advertising methods, according to OnPoint.

Marketers have developed a method known as undercover marketing.  Also called stealth marketing, this unconventional method uses “under-the-radar” tactics to promote a product without the consumer knowing they are seeing an advertisement, according to OnPoint.  Examples of this include hiring models to drink a new beverage at a bar or hiring an actor to play the part of a tourist who asks someone to take his or her picture.  The actor then explains the features of the camera. The product in these cases, the drinks and cameras, are being advertised without consent or knowledge on the part of the consumer.

This type of marketing, Weichel says, annoys her most.  She says that while she understands it is a cheap and effective way of advertising, the ddeceptive nature of undercover marketing makes her angry. 

“They’re just pretending to be your friend or to care," Weichel said. "They just want to sell you something and they don’t care whether or not you want to hear about it.  They don’t even ask."

Carroll says advertisements using undercover marketing give a negative image to advertising and marketing in general.  She says such advertisements exist, but good advertising does not rely on tricking or fooling a consumer into buying an un-wanted product.

“The majority of marketers are attempting to form a relationship between the target audience and their brand,” Carroll said.

In order to establish this relationship the previously mentioned new methods of marketing are being used.  This is primarily because current teens are savvy enough to recognize an advertisement when they see one, according to Callender.

“Very rarely does marketing influence what [teens] need.  It influences what they want,” Callender said.

Paul Calhoun, 18, is a senior at Tomah High School and says that when he sees ads for video games and electronics he uses them to decide which ones interest him and which he wants to buy, but other ads he uses for other reasons.

“I typically pay more attention to the ad than the product since it is usually more interesting,” Calhoun says.

Carroll says that difficulties in teen marketing have nothing to do with teens being smart enough to recognize advertisements.  She says teens today are using ads in a different way than previous generations.  Teens are not trying to decide what is popular by looking at ads; rather they are trying to decide which products better fit their image.

“It’s not about being savvy enough not to be fooled by an ad, it’s about developing preferences for brands because they fit an image [teens] find good, cool or desirable,” Carroll said.

Teens are influenced in various ways by marketing and advertisements and because of this there is debate about the ethics of undercover and target marketing.  Kozinets says that on a basic level marketing is about getting a product to the consumer and so long as the product is not illegal for teens to have, such as tobacco and alcohol, targeting them as a consumer group is ethical.

   “Why should marketers ignore a whole group of people who clearly have specific tastes and face a common set of issues?” Kozinets asked.

From a legal standpoint, according to the Federal Trade Commissions Act, advertisements must be truthful, non-deceptive, and fair.  Also, advertisers must be able to back up any claims made in an advertisement.  The Children’s Advertising Review Unit, part of the Better Business Bureau, a national organization dedicated to solving business problems, goes further by saying that to remain ethical advertisers should take into account the level of knowledge, sophistication and maturity of the audience they are trying to reach when creating ads.

Carroll agreed that marketing specifically to teens is ethical as long as the product is legal for them because teens are able to make critical judgments about purchasing a product and discerning the truth about an advertisement.

“Teens are preparing to become young adults, and need to develop the skills to live in the adult world,” Carroll said.

 One of these skills is being able to make purchasing decisions after viewing and judging advertisements.  For teens, advertisements may not be as influential as is believed.  Weichel says that while she listens to ads and likes to hear what is new and popular, her friends influence most of her purchasing choices.  Carroll says that friends and parents are more influential than ads or marketing techniques.

Despite this, a study by the FTC found that 20 percent of teens say advertisements are influential in their daily spending.  Advertisements also provide teens with a topic of conversation with other teens, a feeling of belonging to a certain group and a way of conveying meaning in their lives, according to the FTC.  Advertisements allow teens to show that they belong based on what they buy, and because of this, advertisements are a part of teen culture.

Marketing to teens is not going to end despite the belief that it may not be as effective as other aspects of teens’ lives.  As long as teens continue spending large sums of money advertisers and marketers will continue to market to them, and will continue to develop new methods to do this.  While debate continues about the ethics and effectiveness of marketing, the fact remains that the teen audience is a viable and powerful consumer group that will continue to draw attention from marketers and advertisers.

“Advertising messages have changed as the culture changed,” Carroll says, “and I believe it will continue to do so.”