Marketing to the future: reaching teens and young adults requires a radically different approach.

Remember that TV commercial with the tag line. "This is not your father's Oldsmobile"?

The car company was trying to make itself relevant to a younger generation--a wise move, if Oldsmobile wants to ensure a viable future. Attracting the attention of today's frenzied young consumer

"Young consumers are simply a very important market," says Mike Gatti, executive vice president of the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association, a division of the National Retail Federation, Washington, D.C. (www .rama-nrf.org). "Young people have their own money and make their own buying decisions; and, as a market, they are growing even more important as society changes. Parents are getting more and more time starved, and they treat their children more like adults than the previous generation of parents did."

Marketers need to both recognize and take advantage of the fact technology is a huge part of young peoples' lives, Gatti notes.

A recent study by Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y. (www .harrisinteractive.com), and Teen Research Unlimited (TRU), Northbrook, Ill. (www.teenresearch .com), shows, in an average week, people between the ages of 13 and 24 spend 16.7 hours online (excluding e-mail), 13.6 hours watching television, 12.0 hours listening to the radio, 7.7 hours talking on the phone, and 6.0 hours reading books and magazines for personal enjoyment.

Another study, commissioned by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, New York, N.Y. (www.carnegie.org), shows 44 percent of young people visit a Web news portal every day, while only 19 percent read a newspaper daily. Twelve percent says they never read a newspaper.

You need to talk to young people at their level, understanding they are very Internet savvy and they use all kinds of media simultaneously," Gatti says. "They might be instant messaging on their computer or text messaging on their phones while they're watching their favorite TV show. Mobile promotions are going to become a very significant marketing tool to reach the youth segment.

"You really have to get the right media mix and deliver the right message to them. You have to become part of their world," he adds.

Making the youth connection

Some companies have become very good at doing just that. Oxy Systems Inc., Cambridge, Mass., developed phling! (www.phling.com) mobile social software for teens and young adults. Phling! connects a mobile phone to PCs and to other mobile phones, allowing users to exchange pictures, voice messages, and text messages between the users' phones and their friends' PCs and phones.

"We're turning the mobile phone into a mobile entertainment and communication device using peer-to-peer networking. We're the glue that connects your phone, your IM buddy list, and your PC together," says Graeme Smith, vice president of product marketing for Oxy Systems.

Oxy Systems' target market for phling! is 14- to 29-year-olds, with a special emphasis on the college market.

"We target this segment because they are early adopters of new technology. They have been raised on instant messaging and texting, and have driven the take up of those technologies. They're the online generation, and they have money to spend," Smith says. "Mobile products, be it the voice plans or the data plans, are making up a significant portion of what our target market is spending their disposable income on each month. They're very receptive."

Word-of-mouth marketing is more important to this consumer segment than to any other, Smith says. For that reason, Oxy Systems relies heavily on both viral marketing and blogs.

"Each phling! message sent contains a link to our website, so the recipient can go and find out more about phling! and perhaps sign up themselves," Smith says. "Another of our main marketing tactics, which is becoming more and more important, is developing a relationship with bloggers who write on mobile computing and mobile phones on the Internet. There is an ever-growing list of these blog sites to which we submitted information about phling! We've been picked up a number of times."

Event marketing is also an integral part of Oxy Systems' promotional strategy.

"Our event-based marketing is very specific and focused on getting the message on college campuses," Smith says. "We've contacted several marketing associations within the universities, and developed relationships with the students who are in those marketing associations. We get them to become users of our product, and then have a booth set up on campus to give out T-shirts and other freebies to promote phling! and our website."

Smith says developing its promotion strategy has been a learning experience for Oxy Systems.

"We realize we ourselves are not our target market, so we have needed to do a lot of primary research to discover what appeals to people who are in that group," he comments. "We went out and talked to 300 students on several different campuses in the Boston area last year to find out what they are looking for in a product, and what messages would be appealing to them. Getting in front of your target market and talking to them is very important.

"Having done it, now we know how much it takes. We know it's going to cost $5 a head, and that includes the free Baskin-Robbins ice cream ticket," Smith continues.

"We realized the mix of people we send out to talk to college students is important. The first time we did this, we sent one person out, a young guy. He only had responses from females, because none of the guys on campus would talk to him," Smith says. "After that, we sent out a male and a female, and we doubled our responses. It's trial and error, but we did find out having interviewees of the same age group and a balance of sexes greatly improved our response rates."

Boost Mobile (www.boostmobile .com), Irvine, Calif., a division of Nextel Communications Inc., Reston, Va., has elevated youth-focused marketing to an art form. The company, which develops and distributes wireless communication devices, provides a product, service and brand message specifically geared toward 16- to 24-year olds.

"Everything we do is with our core audience in mind," says Mark Fewell, senior director of Media & Business Development. "We believe our product contributes positively to the youth lifestyle. In our marketing, we try to portray the lifestyle of different youth cultures."

What appeals to young consumers tends to change quickly, so approaching a younger demographic requires companies to switch gears as trends change. Fewell says marketers to young consumers must also be rapidly responsive to feedback, and find a way to be engaged in their world.

"One thing we have always tried to do is communicate to our youth audience on their own terms, and with a sense of respect," Fewell says. "The young demographic is often more discerning and sometimes cynical, so you have to be authentic in what you're doing. You can't be a phony. We've been successful because, whatever we do, we're all about trying to find ways to elevate the youth lifestyle."

Boost Mobile uses a wide range of marketing vehicles to reach its audience, including highly targeted TV and radio ads, as well as outdoor, Web, point-of-sale and direct marketing--often featuring celebrities like rap artist Ludacris, and sports heroes like Kelly Slater, six-time world surfing champion. But it is the Boost Mobile event marketing that is most impressive.

"We do a lot of experiential marketing," Fewell says. "We either sponsor or conduct around 150 different events per year. Some are very big, like music concerts or world championship tour surfing events; but we also do smaller, grass-roots things like skate tours. Those on-the-ground activities allow young people to see our brand and experience something about us.

"We also try to make a difference. We genuinely believe in supporting activities that are entertaining to youth. We don't just put a banner up; we fully integrate ourselves in the process," he adds.

In fact, Boost Mobile employs many young people, whose jobs are to travel and live in the youth environment.

"They are bringing back the real experience to us, so we're getting regular feedback from our customers," Fewell notes.

Clearly, that's not something most companies can do, but the idea behind it is something any business can embrace. It requires discovering what matters to young consumers and finding a way to be a part of that, whether by partnering with a company that has a natural appeal to young people, sponsoring a local event they care about, or helping young consumers achieve their goals.

"You have to be prepared to take some risks," Fewell says. "Decide what you think will work, and then have a go at it and see if it does. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. But unless you get in there and have a go, you're never going to find it."

By Jennifer Barr Kruger

e-mail: jkruger@pmai.org

RELATED ARTICLE: Why are young consumers important?

Why do you need to attract teens and young adults to your business? Aside from the fact today's kids are future parents and businesspeople, here are some statistics to consider:

* 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 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.

* In 2004, teens spent an average of $91 per week in 2004, down from $103 in 2003. This weekly spending figure includes both teens' own money and the cash they receive as gifts, allowances, and other spending money from parents.

Statistics from Teen Research Unlimited (TRU), Northbrook, Ill. (www .teenresearch.com), and from the book "Getting Wiser to Teens: More Insights into Marketing to Teenagers," by Peter Zollo, co-founder and president of TRU.