How Do You Balance Marketing And The Seemingly Innate Uncoolness Of Marketing To Teens?

I was reading some of the posts here and many seem to suggest marketing as much as easily possible, but in several age groups marketing is considered uncool. I am currently studying marketing and teens, which has had an interesting progression over the last few decades. While marketing is kind of "uncool" for most ages, teens have so much of it thrown at them that they traditional marketing doesn't work.

Since many of the forum members have small businesses, how do you market to teens, if they are in your target demographic?

Has anyone who has been in business for a while found this to be something that effects your business with adults(yesterdays teens are today's adults, and this has been going on for a while)?

 

I think it's smart to market to teenagers. For the most part, they are carnivorous consumers. They have a lot thrown at them, but they also respond to a lot of marketing. Parents are more than willing to spend a lot of money on their teenagers, and that's also the age where you typically start working for the first time. I think you need to be interesting, edgy and hip in order to appeal to today's teenager. You have to savvy about what interests them and what really catches their interest.

 

I don't think marketing in itself is the one that is seen as uncool, but more just that some marketers probably have a disconnect in terms of how kids speak and so when they attempt to seem hip and cool they actually just reveal themselves as the exact opposite. These days it's not so necessary to rely on buzz words anymore so there really is no more reason to try and act cool, but merely just be as sincere as transparent as you could be so your marketing style wouldn't come off as obnoxious.

 

Personally, I wouldn't say that teenagers look as marketing as uncool. If anything, I would consider the reason being lack of knowledge or complete understanding of the aspect of marketing. With that said, I don't think there would be any sort of trick to gaining the interest of teenagers, since it is done on a daily basis. In my opinion, branding is key. The appeal factor has to be present. Then, I would also make sure to use their primary communication vehicles (I.e. social media, mobile marketing).

Before I took a marketing class in my junior year of high school, it was all foreign to me. However, just because I didn't fully comprehend the aspect, didn't mean that I couldn't distinguish between TV advertisements that I saw, know what everyone in school was talking about, and ultimately, make a choice to buy product A or B.