Getting Wiser With Teens.

Most parents admit that teens can be baffling creatures. Whether slumped in front of the TV or locked away in a bedroom, teenagers can be a formidable group—communication with them is no easy task, even for those who live within the same household. For companies looking to develop and market products to the younger generation, the challenge takes on added significance: teens are a complex group who can be highly lucrative market. Making incorrect assumptions about teens, however, can doom a marketing campaign and potentially do more harm than good.

“Getting Wiser to Teens: More Insights into Marketing to Teenagers” by Peter Zollo offers a comprehensive look at today’s teens and lays the strategic and tactical foundation for successful teen-targeted marketing campaigns. In more than 400 pages, including 100-plus comprehensive charts, “Getting Wiser to Teens” looks at teens as they see themselves, while offering insights and analysis based on thousands of teen interviews and practical experience gained through working on scores of successful campaigns and product launches.

Among Peter Zollo’s observations on the teen market:

In 2003, teens spent $115 billion of their own money and an additional $60 billion of their parents’ cash, giving the 33 million American teens spending power greater than the gross domestic product of countries such as Finland, Portugal and Greece.

Without the burden of a mortgage or rent, groceries and utilities, nearly all of teen income is discretionary. But teens’ influence doesn’t stop with their own billions. With the rise of double-income families, as well as single-parent families, teens are increasingly responsible for family spending. They also influence family purchases and set societal trends.
“Teens are incredibly marketing-savvy,” Zollo explains, noting that teens will see nearly 300,000 advertising messages by the age of 19. “They are profoundly accustomed to marketing and they can easily detect messages that are less credible. Painting teens with a broad brush or resorting to stereotypical images will backfire. This is not a monolithic group. You need to have a keen understanding of teen culture in order to develop products for them that they want and need and to create advertising and marketing that’s truly relevant.”

Chapter by chapter, “Getting Wiser to Teens” paints a revealing picture of teen lifestyles and values. Based on a variety of innovative qualitative and quantitative research techniques, Zollo reveals the nuances of teens’ psyches and attitudes along a wide range of topics, from friends and school to parents and parties. The book describes four distinct typologies, known as Teen/Types™, which explain how trends are adopted in treenage culture, from fashion, technology, and music, to brand and media preferences.

Among Peter Zollo’s observations on teen life:

Today’s teens share some timeless adolescent qualities—they crave freedom and fun, count the days until they qualify for their driver’s license, and wish they were better looking. But don’t let the low-rise jeans fool you: today’s teens are more devoted than ever to God and Mom (in that order, according to TRU survey data).

Technically proficient multi-taskers, today’s teens may be found simultaneously instant-messaging friends, listening to music, surfing the ‘Net, and doing homework.

Perhaps not surprisingly, today’s teens are stressed out: they’re constantly trying to balancing the responsibilities of home, school and related activities, part-time jobs, their burgeoning social lives, along with the typical turmoil of adolescence.

Even so, they are overwhelmingly optimistic about their future. In fact, more than 80% believe that they will “always be successful.”

And though individuals of this age group use physical appearance to help establish their image and their place in teen society, this tendency applies mostly to clothing styles and brands. Differences in skin color, though readily acknowledged, are seldom a point of distinction in modern teen culture.

“Today’s teens truly embrace diversity,” says Zollo. “While previous generations talked a lot about it, the Millennials really walk the walk. Because, they’re teenagers, they still tend to make snap judgements about their peers at times. But an individual’s ethnic background generally doesn’t drive such impressions.”