VIEWPOINT: Don't talk down to your targets, talk with them

It seems like the more we learn, the less we realise we know. The teen market is a classic case in point. Speaker after speaker at the recent Teen Power 2000 conference in Hong Kong referred to surveys and research which had been conducted on this segment, only to conclude that the demographic continued to confound marketers and agencies alike because of its volatility. Teenagers are moving targets. Just when you think you have them in your sights, they duck, dive or weave out of position, usually reappearing in some totally new, transmuted form. There are few target audiences which are as changeable and unpredictable as the youth market, and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the people attempting to reach them are always "old farts", comparatively speaking. If the teens' own parents and teachers fail to understand them or communicate successfully with them, what hope for the rest of the world? And don't think that surveys or research will keep you afloat - by the time results have been compiled, tabulated and analysed, teens have moved on and whatever moved them at the time fieldwork was being conducted, suddenly becomes "like, so yesterday". It might seem like a radical, totally ridiculous idea (but then again, so are teenagers), but marketers should consider taking on board a teenaged consultancy panel, who can share insights and suggest where a marketing strategy or a creative concept might be improved to reach their peers successfully. If you recall the Tom Hanks movie Big, this is exactly what happened - he played a young boy trapped in the body of a grown man, and somehow ended up on the R&D team at a toy company. His insights into what kids today wanted from their toys confounded his adult colleagues, but in every instance, he was proved right. Of course, taking advice from consultants who are still in the throes of puberty might be hard to swallow for some marketers, but let's face it - it's a lot cheaper than risking total failure by not getting it right in the first place.

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