REPORT - TEEN POWER 2000: Teen market stays one step ahead - So you think you know how to talk to teens, do you? ... Well, think again

It comes as news to no one that teenagers are highly cynical about marketing, suspicious of advertising and have an unnerving ability to set trends even before marketers can invent them. There are, however, ways to reach this infuriating target group, and marketers just have to try that much harder, although there are certain sure-win methods - music, for example. As singer Bjork once said, "As we become increasingly alienated in our lives, music may be the only voice we have left". But as Channel V commercial director Jasper Donat noted at the Teen Power 2000 conference in Hong Kong, it is crucial to understand how teenagers are interacting with music these days, not just listening to it. "Nowadays, music is so cool and so interactive that it has gone from passive to active," he said, pointing to websites such as Beatnik, which uses software that enables users to create and record their own mixes for popular songs - and these new mixes can then be emailed to friends or even back to the original artists. Some marketers have already caught on to the possibilities offered by the 'Net, including vodka maker Absolut, which encourages viewers to test their DJ skills by mixing online. Of course, online marketing is not the be-all and end-all of how best to reach the teen segment. "There have been huge fragmentations in the media targeted at Asian teens, and this in turn is highly filtered by the target itself," said Mr Donat. "Time has become a precious commodity - once you waste (teenagers') time, you'll lose them forever. They'll never come back." This means that marketing and advertising needs not only to be highly targeted, it must be totally relevant - this in itself causes problems, because what is cool and what is not can change on a daily basis with teenagers. "It is important to talk to kids all the time," he said. "Young people today are major commercial influencers in the home. In China, for example, up to 70 per cent of purchase decisions are determined by children, compared with just 40 per cent in the US. Youth, therefore, are very important customers." The key point in any use of music when targeting teens is to make the experience as interactive as possible: "They can even interact with music at games arcades," Mr Donat said, referring to dance machines and games in which players can test their musical skills with simulated guitars and suchlike. Then there have been marketers, mainly record companies, who have turned the entire concept of artist endorsement on its head by specifically creating bands as products, who look great on TV but are basically incapable of writing music or playing their own instruments. Despite this, the power of artist endorsement still exists, and some highly synergistic partnerships have been forged. In recent contracts Pepsi negotiated with the likes of Faye Wong, Aaron Kwok and Janet Jackson, for example, the line between the artists' music videos (to promote their own songs) and the product TVC (to promote the drink) is all but erased, resulting in strikingly similar creative for both. The singers' tracks were also licenced for Pepsi giveaways in China, in which specially-produced CDs were given away for every purchase of a specific number of cans of Pepsi. Tie-ups of this nature can have drawbacks, particularly where teens feel that the product placement is too obvious and the marketing becomes, in essence, "hostile". In one case, teens in India were turned off in droves when soft drink Limka negotiated a highly prominent - and totally out of character - placement in a music video by a popular singer. A lot of careful consideration and thought needs to be given to star endorsement and event sponsorship, therefore. Channel V and Philips, for example, have just launched the "Face to Face" project, in which 18 concerts will be staged across China over the next nine months - and the live element will be given a multimedia twist with coverage on the radio and Internet. "Teens will thank sponsors and buy their products, but event sponsorship has become so much more than just hanging up a couple of banners at a concert and hoping that the audience will like your product," Mr Donat said.

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