Target Marketing

1. Target Marketing Why are teens the number one target for advertising?

2. Why do advertisers market to teens? • They have money to burn, and the items they buy are largely “luxury” items, like clothing, electronics, and music. • They make many, if not most, of their purchasing decisions independently. • They have significant influence on family purchases. • Companies know that once they have “branded” a child, he or she is likely to be a customer for life, or from “cradle to grave.”

3. What methods? • Advertising is in magazines, movies, TV shows, and on the internet. • Companies glean important demographic info about kids spending habits from seemingly innocuous internet “quizzes” and “surveys”, Facebook, Google searches.

4. How do they relate it? • They know how to capitalize on important teenage issues and anxieties, like body image, peer acceptance, coolness, and a need for power. • Marketers hone in on themes and attitudes that parents might find inappropriate or offensive, like sex or alcohol and drug use, further escalating the “coolness factor” of the product.

5. How does advertising work? • Advertising works best when it creates insecurities about something such as a person’s appearance. • A successful ad convinces the viewer that they have a problem that needs fixing, and then proposes to offer the solution, which just happens to be the product they are selling. • The message is that teens aren’t good enough the way they are. • Many kids unwittingly buy into that message, and as a result, end up being hypercritical of themselves because we don’t fit a certain “image” that they believe is necessary for their happiness.

6. Teenage Consumer Statistics- Verified Feb 2012

7. Girl’s who follow trends

8. Is this fair? Discuss