Your brand can become their brand

Editor’s note: Ted Mininni is president of Design Force Inc., a Marlton, N.J., consulting firm.

Tweens. Ranging in age from 8 to 12, they’re not children anymore. But they’re not quite teenagers. Marketers are increasingly focusing on this demographic and for good reason. Between their own growing purchasing power and the influence they exert on family purchases, tweens account for a staggering $240+ billion in spending. What’s more, tweens are very brand-conscious, highly impressionable and use favorite brands to define themselves. Tweens’ favorite category purchases include food, music, fashion, entertainment, toys and games.

Reaching tweens isn’t hard; this demographic responds favorably to traditional media, including TV, radio, and age-appropriate magazines. However, the Internet and cell phones are rapidly becoming tweens’ favorite communications platforms, due to their highly interactive nature. Reaching tweens with marketing messages isn’t the hard part, but selling them is another matter.

Interesting demographic

Tweens present an interesting demographic. They have an amazing ability to multitask. They can engage in a conversation, have one eye on the TV or their ears plugged into their favorite tunes on the iPod as they instant-message friends on the Internet.

Since they’re growing up in a media-rich environment, tweens are adept at using more features on the Internet and cell phones than adults are. They love electronic communications since they are highly interactive and offer a quick, easy way to keep in touch with their friends. Marketers’ Web sites that are interactive and allow tweens to have control over their own experiences, giving them maximum enjoyment and a sense of freedom, are absolute favorites. Ditto with mobile phone marketing.

Marketing campaigns that partner with popular tween Web sites, or choose to market on mobile phones will do well if they:

  • Offer interactive games or contests since tweens love to participate. The element of fantasy in games is popular with tweens.
  • Post silly humor or nonsensical jokes that no one is supposed to get; tweens enjoy sharing these with their friends. Promoting fun with humor is key in tween marketing campaigns.
  • Tie in with pop cult characters whose core values tweens identify with. For example, Harry Potter, Spiderman and specific Nickelodeon properties.

Brands must be perceived as teen-oriented, not child-oriented. Feeling grown up, being taken seriously and not talked down to is important to tweens.

Honesty and authenticity are also very important; kids can smell phoniness a mile off. Turn tweens off once and marketers have lost them for good. According to researcher Millward Brown Optimor, there are six core values tweens respond and aspire to: fantasy, mastery, love, fear, stability and humor. Hence, tweens’ love of brands like Harry Potter and American Idol, myTego, Hasbro’s Tiger Electronics, American Girl, and so on. These brands embody some, if not all, of tweens’ core values.

Tweens love to go online at www.mytego.com and customize the skins, or covers, for their mobile handhelds. IPods, Nintendo units and cell phones all become tween-stamped in a matter of moments. Tweens create custom-designed skins that go on and come off easily and see those designs being created in real time. They basically “brand” and customize their electronics very easily with myTego. This enables them to give free reign to fantasy, mastery and humor, and implement symbols of these values into their designs, as well as elements that signify love and fear for them, if they choose.

Hasbro’s Tiger Electronics is a lifestyle brand exclusively designed for the tween set. The brand offers tweens TV plug-in and handheld and computer games. CHATNOW communicators mimic cell phones, allowing tweens to chat or text their friends within a two-mile radius. The device even has a built-in digital camera. Another handheld, the Massively MiniMedia Player allows tweens to store almost two hours of digital music, up to one hour or video and up to 1,200 photos.

Tiger Electronics’ new music and video players, like the I-DOG, are designed to plug into tweens’ music players and produce big sound through their built-in speakers or the kids’ own headphones. I-DOG even grooves to music with movement and flashing LED lights that change color. All of these products appeal to tweens on many levels; they’re tween versions of very adult kinds of electronics. They appeal to top tween values that they and their friends share as they use these products, such as mastery and fantasy. The concept of customization of product and brand is a big factor here too: Tweens can shape Tiger Electronics products and make them their own. What’s not to love about that?

Complete pushback

Hard-sell techniques are not appreciated by tweens. In fact, that tack will result in a complete pushback. Using the tactics we’ve demonstrated will elicit favorable responses from tweens, and they themselves will then market to their circle of friends via word of mouth. Whatever we choose to call it – word of mouth, viral or buzz marketing – it’s a hallmark of this demographic.

Whether it’s at school, at sporting events or at other venues where tweens spend time, on the Internet or on their cell phones, this demographic group will make or break fads, trends, brands and preferences. When group members endorse brands, tweens rush to embrace them. Community marketing is increasingly used to brand-message tweens: local malls, movie theaters, sporting and entertainment venues are favorites to reach them.

Love to experiment

According to industry statistics, over 60 percent of tweens find out about hot new brands or products from their friends, inside and outside of school. Many marketers have turned to school-oriented brand messaging within the context of school events and programs to reach tweens. Tweens love to experiment and try new things. New fads, trends and ideas that meet with peer approval shape their attitudes and gain acceptance. Be prepared to see these accepted trends or ideas become shaped in a manner tweens can make their own.

As stated earlier, tweens respond very favorably to being able to have control over, or being able to create, their own experiences. Mass personalization enables tweens to take brands and truly make them their own. Business models that cater to mass personalization are a hit with tweens, including myTego, American Girl and Build-A-Bear.

By specifically gearing brands for them in a relevant and authentic manner, and marketing them as “just for you,” companies find acceptance for their products with tweens. When companies acknowledge who tweens are, respect their intelligence, wants and needs, tweens will return the favor by becoming true brand adherents.

Let them define

Remember: the key to success when marketing to tweens is to let them define what their brand experiences will be, rather than trying to deliver the experiences as companies think they should be. This generation of tweens has learned how to create their own experiences in their online and offline lives, and they expect to be able to personalize their brands as well.

Letting tweens adopt brands as they wish and make them an integral part of their lives turns them into brand ambassadors. Tweens will then sell these brands to their friends via word of mouth. And that is the most desirable kind of marketing for any company trying to reach this active, multitasking, totally connected demographic.