thoughts

Teenagers: Exploited by marketers, or smarter than all of us?

by Austin McGhie

Over the past couple of years, we’ve had the distinct pleasure of talking to several hundred teenagers around the country, working with brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Nike, Levi’s, xbox, and Red Bull. In doing so, we’ve come to appreciate that today’s teenager may just be the smartest consumer in the history of the planet, as they naturally use technology to manage their media environment and constantly access objective information about any product or service that might be under consideration. With them, the truth always wins out sooner, never later.

We keep asking them about brands, and they keep responding with perceptive points about good old fashioned product performance. They’re sure of what they want and why they want it, but consumers they remain, and our job is to reach them. More than ever before, marketing mechanics are about sense of discovery and word of mouth rather than “mass” marketing. But amid all of this newfound consumer pragmatism strong brands are being built by those who know how to work the new equation.

At the Sterling Group we’ve worked with teens and some of their favorite brands. We’ve talked with them enough to be embarrassed by our own lack of sophistication as consumers. We’ve banged it all around enough with our clients to build a working knowledge of most of the right questions, though we definitely don’t have all the answers. Thinking about the teen consumer is thinking about the future of marketing. We like it.

Of course, we’d love to talk to you about your brand…