Teen Marketing Trends

The paradox of "cool hunting" is that it kills what it finds. In America, as well as across the globe, trends are consistently changing and the trend spotters are trying to keep up with the ever changing ideas of today’s teenagers. Every big-city scene-kid or bored teenager in the suburbs stays connected to the moment's hot clubs, restaurants, hobbies and clothing. Trend Spotters travel the world, watch people shop, eat, and mingle, videotape and photograph them, study census data, examine online journals, chat online with tens of thousands of potential customers, and devour every slice of pop culture in order to keep up with the trends.

Today's young people are generally unresponsive to traditional brand marketing messages. Teens spent $12 billion dollars last year according to a recent study of Teen Marketing Trends. Teens not only use their money on small purchases such as music, clothes and food but also have the power to influence high-end purchases of their parents. Every year younger teens are being marketed because that they are the future teenagers and brand loyalty is an important thing to many companies. If you can get an older child hooked on a product, they’ll generally love it for life. These younger age demographics are being marketed to because more and more kids have increasing spending power and authority over what is purchased in their household.

In the Frontline documentary, “Merchants of Cool” the top marketing experts discuss the teen demographic and new ways to target this seemingly difficult demographic. They are finding that teenagers contain a small amount of brand loyalty, and will consistently change brands to go with the flow of “cool.” Teens are more suspicious and resenting towards the normal marketing concepts, such as commercials, billboards, and radio advertisements, and are slowly catching onto the concept of buzz marketing.

Buzz marketing is a very deceptive practice performed by many top marketing companies. According to the Business Week article, “Buzz Marketing,” backlash is a common result of buzz marketing, "Our clients have to know that if you are trying to be subversive and you are found out, it can be dangerous," states Scott Leonard, CEO of ADD Marketing Inc., an agency that uses street teams and chat-room "cyber-reps" to spread hot, not-always-flattering gossip about client company recording artists.

Marketing oriented companies are ones that allow the wants and needs of consumers and potential customers to drive the firm's tactical decisions.