Marketing to Teens

You are what you wear, what you snack on, how you accessorize. Ever heard of the “echo boomers?” Generation Y, generation wired, the digital generation, millenials? If not, you probably haven't been reading the retail trade journals—BrandWeek, Sporting Goods Business, and Target Marketing, among others. You've missed out on the frenzy, the corporate executives tripping over themselves to survey, study, and create brand loyalty in their “demographic darlings”—the 78 million children born since 1978.

Industry excitement is palpable. By 2010, the teen population is supposed to peak at 35 million. Teen income is thought to have risen 29 percent in the last 5 years. Teens spend billions of dollars a year on clothes, and many of them use a credit card (either their own or their parents') for purchases. Surveys say that teens love shopping. They go to malls 56 times a year for about 90 minutes each visit, and spend $38.55—on average.

What's a Retail Industry To Do?

Commission more surveys, for starters. Find out important bits of information like “Snacks represent 35 percent of teen eating occasions—occasions that now total 4.33 per day.” Pinpoint the age that kids start to develop brand loyalty (10 years) and at which point that loyalty is fixed (15 years). Design stores that play loud music and have the feel of a bedroom or a den. Offer free food, fashion shows, and makeovers. Walk the line between being cool but not gimmicky. Teens these days are media savvy. They've been raised on television shows and Disney movies designed not just to deliver advertising but an infinite array of sidelines. As Fortune magazine reminds us, “If she's moved by your CD, she'll buy your licensed T-shirt, book bag, candy bar, screensaver, lip gloss, cola, umbrella...”

Above all else, set up a web site. Today's teens make up the first computer literate generation of shoppers. Not only are they used to media serving up advertising, they're accustomed to consumer goods representing lifestyle choices and identity. Teen oriented catalogs (electronic and print) feature advice columns, fashion news, and articles about health, sex, boys, and make-up. Junior apparel marketer moXiegirl will send you a free subscription to its “magalog” (aka “catazine”) as long as you buy at least “one little thing” from them. Their web site defines what it means to be a “cool chick,” all the while blurring the boundaries between “hanging out” and shopping.

 “Hey girls, welcome to moXiegirL. There's places to hang, to explore, and to read stuff by and about other kewl chics. We'll feature articles on grrrls who rip, hot boys, and hotlinks to other girlie sites, and, while you're here you can also shop for the most rad, luscious and tasty on earth. We're open 24 hours so come on in and poke around.”

Delia's, another leading marketer of teen clothing and accessories, sponsors the Gurlnet Network in alliance with the advertising network chickclick.com. (“You click girl!”) This “robust online community” offers a magazine, community area, chat rooms, and the opportunity to build your own home page. You can also get free e-mail, and discounts on Delia products “just for checking your e-mail.” “We see Delia's as something like MTV or Seventeen. We're an arbiter of style and taste,” says Steve Kahn, president of Delia's catalog (Boston Globe).

Featuring emaciated teen models and glossy spreads on home furnishings (including an inflatable metallic “chill chair,” bathroom and treehouse, accessories), clothes, shoes, and knick knacks, Delia's uses every page of its catalog to invite the teen shopper to ponder some cutting edge questions. About physics, for example: “If the universe is expanding, why is there never enough closet space?” About being wise to doublespeak advertising: “How can something be a ‘genuine imitation'”? About the puzzling features of life in the new millennium: “Why do the doors of 24-hour stores have locks?”

“We're just like you,” the catalog says to kids. “A little bit childish, a little bit questioning, a little bit quirky. You can playfully celebrate your youth and set yourselves apart from your stuffy parents by expressing yourself through our products. Looking confident but not defiant, models of the “latch pocket cargo pants” want to know, “Why can't you remove those warning tags from mattresses?”

Oh, those teens. They're so cute when they're questioning authority. So hip to the ways of the media. As one teen-directed ad for jeans says, “Forget the ultra-skinny models. Don't make us read a lot of copy. Stop telling us what's cool. And don't try to talk like us. Just show us the jeans.” This ad for Arizona Jeans is discussed by Jessica Lind-Diamond, age 13, writing in the feminist publication New Moon Magazine. She says, “Some ads seem to have great messages even though they're trying to sell something. But, in the end, they deliver mixed messages. An ad for contact lenses says: ‘After all, it's about confidence and being seen for who you really are.' I like it that the ad encourages girls to be themselves. But before that, it calls the lenses ‘the ultimate accessory.' The message is that it's good to let others see who you are, but that you can only be yourself with the help of fashionable accessories. I just think that wearing glasses or contacts is a personal choice, not a fashion statement.”

An ad in Teen People for Hang Ten clothing says, “In a world where you can be anything, be yourself.” Marketers need teens to find self-expression in the products they consume. Other ways of experiencing agency in the world—such as participating in art, politics, sports, etc.—are muted or invisible. Make-up and clothing ads thus get a ringing endorsement from the magazine's content. Commercially driven magazines feature articles about make-up techniques, exercise regimens, and advice about how to get a boyfriend. The magazine's advertising then points teens to the products that will help them address all the flaws (in their skin, their body types, and their sex lives) that teen girls are now convinced they are vexed with. Consciously or not, commercially driven teen magazines must make themselves attractive to advertisers by featuring content that affirms the importance of the products and the lifestyle choices that advertisers are trying to promote.

In a March 1998 Boston Phoenix article, writer Ellen Barry points out that 60 percent of teenage girls rely on glossy magazines as their primary source of information about birth control, relationships, and health. “So girls desperate for facts tend to get them wrapped in a multi-front campaign to harness [their] buying power.”

While corporations try to convince teens that brand names will help make them “who they really are,” a few national publications exist whose mission is other than marketing. New Moon Magazine (www.newmoon.org) for girls ages 8 to 14, Teen Voices (www.teen- voices.com) for teenage girls, and HUES (Hear Us Emerging Sisters, www.hues.net) for young women ages 17 to 29, are all written and edited by girls, teens, and adults in collaboration. Their objectives include: being a tool “for a girl to use as she builds resilience and resistance to our sexist society, moving confidently out into the world, pursuing her unique path in life” (New Moon); offering an antidote to “magazines that [teach] women to hate their bodies, that ignore women's cultures and identities, that encourage women to fade into the background instead of showing their true colors” (HUES); and providing an “interactive, educational forum that challenges media images of women and serves as a vehicle of change, improving young women's social and economic status” (Teen Voices).

Of these three alternatives to mainstream teen publications, Teen Voices is least satisfied with simply offering positive role models for girls. Alison Amoroso, who co-founded Teen Voices in 1988, wants to empower young women and uncover the roots of social problems in the process. According to a June 1996 Boston Globe interview, she is after “nothing less than sweeping social change.” In Volume 7, Issue 4, 15-year-old Ryan DiAngelis critiques a Nike ad that, on the surface, seems to be acknowledging girls' strength and ability. However, DiAngelis points out, many Nike products are made by exploited young girls in factories who will never have access to the opportunities that the confident forward-looking white girl does in the Nike ad. Followed up with an interview of a sweatshop worker, an analysis of how companies get you to buy, information about labor laws, and suggestions for how to get involved in anti-sweatshop activism, Teen Voices focuses on more than just the narrow and sexist depiction of women in advertising. Rather, it effectively probes the many institutions and oppressive systems that help make Nike what it is. This sophisticated political context gives the teen writers, editors, and readers a chance to experience themselves as agents of social change.

Published by the not-for-profit Women Express, Inc., Teen Voices provides information and airs opinions about diversity, abortion, teen pregnancy, teen motherhood, health, the media, paying for college, and much more. Women Express also links teens with adult mentors, provides an apprenticeship program, ongoing journalism projects, and an advocacy and referral program. Teen Voices is clearly a place where teens are valued for more than potential access to a credit card.

Commercial publications see their subscribers as consumers of advertising. They want teens to be self-actualized at the shopping mall. Alternative magazines want to be a catalyst for individual and grassroots empowerment. Support alternative teen media by subscribing, donating money, and spreading the word.                                 Z

Cynthia Peters is a former long-time staff member of South End Press, a current staff member of GCN, and writes a regular column on parenting for Z.