Marketing To Kids and Teens
Why Young People are Targeted by Advertisers
After all, adults make most of the money in our economy. Shouldn’t it stand to reason that most of the advertising would be directed at them?
According to Donnell Alexander and Aliza Dichter of MediaChannel, “Two billion dollars is spent annually targeting juvenile customers.” It's nearly impossible to walk into a mall or turn on the television without confronting products and marketing that many adults may not be interested in or even understand. Why is this group, with relatively little earning power, such a sought-after demographic?
Teen Spending Power
Today’s young people have an unprecedented amount of money to spend on personal items. Many kids enjoy large allowances, and older teens may have cash from part time jobs. This means that they have a lot of disposable income that can be spend on luxury items, like clothing, electronics, music, and other items popular with young people. Because young people are making a lot of the purchasing decisions regarding these objects, they are designed and marketed with kids and teens in mind.
Teen Influence on Household Spending
Another reason kids are so important to marketers is that kids influence a lot of the spending that occurs in families, too. They may be responsible for grocery shopping or other purchases because of time constraints on the adult in the family.
Even when parents do the purchasing, kids usually have some say in the kinds of things or brands that they buy. Marketer Gene DelVecchio estimates that “kids influence about 70% of household purchases.” [Creating Evercool: A Marketer’s Guide to a Kid’s Heart, Pelican Publishing, 1997, p. 23.] Companies recognize this power, so they products and run ads that in some way appeal to kids, whether the product is a typically “teen” product or not.
These days, kid-directed ads for things such as cars, vacations, restaurants, electronics and other bigger-ticket items are not unusual. In fact, advertisers often direct ads specifically to kids because they know that kids can be very powerful and persistent when it comes to getting their parents to buy stuff. In the advertising business they call this concept the Nag Factor or Pester Power.
Brand Loyalty and Teens
Marketers know that getting people to switch to their brand after a long time using another brand can be tough. Because of this, it is in marketers’ best interest to go after a customer base that has yet to develop a strong brand preference. Kids and teens who are nearer to the starting point of their careers as consumers fit the bill perfectly. And because kids and teens tends to be loyal to brands once they find one they identify with, companies may potentially have a customer for life, from “cradle to grave.”
Because of their money, influence, and age, kids and teens are big business for most major companies. For this reason, it is essential that kids are taught media awareness skills that include not only understanding why they are targeted by marketers, but how to critically assess marketing messages, as well.
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