How do you market to an audience that is skeptical of traditional advertising, very media savvy, and possessed of short attention spans? And how do you turn a product that is highly dependent on seasonal sales into a product of choice year-round?
Both topics were addressed at this year's Wharton Marketing Conference which included a panel on "What Teens Want: Capturing the Attention of the Trend-Driven and Lucrative Teen Dollar," and a keynote presentation by Richard H. Lenny, chairman, president and CEO of The Hershey Company.
Whether a company's marketing target is the $175 billion that 30 million teenagers in the U.S. will spend annually on everything from fashion to electronics, or the $65 billion that U.S. consumers spend on snacks every year, the goal is "to play to win," conference participants emphasized. "Very simply, it's what we all do," said Lenny. "Whether you are in marketing, sales, operations or trying to get a Supreme Court Justice appointed, playing to win is what's most important."
One Fickle Market
But with the teen market, noted the panelists on "What Teens Want," that goal is particularly challenging. Teens, after all, constitute a very unique segment -- fickle, competitive, ever-changing and constantly on the move. Companies that want to get a toehold in the teenage landscape must be able to speak their language, identify their latest trends and find the optimal ways to target them through everything from music downloads to instant messaging advertising.
"Teens are an enormously important segment because they are disproportionately powerful in terms of being trend setters and early adopters," said Keith Niedermeier, Wharton visiting professor of marketing and panel moderator. "Additionally, they are an attractive market because of the lifetime value they offer. Capturing teens and establishing brand loyalty can launch decades of positive yields in the future.
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