When selling to teens, can you hang with the cool kids? It’s not too tricky, especially now that you’ve gotten over that excessive perspiration thing and finally had your first kiss. Just follow a few simple rules, and you’re on your way. Here’s just a couple to help build up your confidence and take your mind off that zit on your chin:
The pink hair, the pants sagged so far they appear a mere parody of clothing, the kabuki-style makeup (in high school, I had more of a Noh theatre look myself): teens may look ridiculous, but they’re not stupid. They’re savvy consumers, just like you are. They know when they’re being marketed to and they’re generally OK with it. With that in mind, don’t expect to “exploit” your teen audience any more than you would your 21-34 audience. They know what you’re up to.
Teen price pointing: teens are bargain hunters, but only up to a certain point. We’ll call that point about $100. Under that number, teens are likely to look for twofers, sign-up-a-friend deals, and sales. Because that’s generally their own money, derived from an allowance. Once you start pricing your product at a greater amount, you’ve moved out of the deregulated cash zone; that is, things that a teen can spend money on that his parents won’t find out about. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course. Some kids have an unregulated supply of cash, while others are expected to contribute what they have to the household budget. (You may have heard that 63% of high school seniors carry a credit card. OK, but consider whose lap those Visa statements land in. Teens are smart about paper trails.) Consider the pricing on video games: throughout their history, they have rarely been above about $80, for just this reason. If you absolutely must price your product above $100, go ahead, but understand that there will be certain complications. You can go much higher and still secure the teen market, but will now have to consider parental input into the buying decisions. Oddly, after you’ve entered the realm of higher price points, bargains become less important. If a teen wants something expensive badly enough, their pleading will generally have a greater pull to instigate the purchase than any twofer deal. However, tread carefully in this territory. Addressing to the teen and parental demographics at the same time is a whole other ballgame, and truthfully, remains to be perfected.
When addressing teens, don’t use lingo in your copy. You can use “hot”, once or twice. That’s it. My eighth grade english teacher, when discussing Shakespeare, would often toss around the “total jerk” phrase. As in, “Tyvalt just appears to be some total jerk, don’t you guys think?” And, we mocked her. When you’re tempted to break out some lingo for “the kids”, keep this in mind. If you think you know what teens are saying up to the minute, I can assure you you’re wrong. Why? Because by the time that adults have appropriated these terms, their meaning has changed, precisely because adults are now using them. It’s entirely unappetizing to teen ears to hear an adult discuss something in teen lingo. Once Mom starts saying “really cool,” it’s the canary in the mine indicating that it’s time to scale back on its usage. To expand on this point, check out this commentary by satirist Stephen Colbert, riffing on Kraft’s trying-too-hard Miracle Whip campaign.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Mayo-lution Will Not Be Televised | ||||
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When you use teen lingo in your copywriting, you probably sound like Kraft. By using it satirically, Stephen (as well as his Comedy Central cousin, Jon Stewart) gets away with it, appealing to teens in part because he doesn’t appropriate their language and fire it back at them with a straight face. Also note the insanely popular Twilight series, written by Mormon mom Stephanie Meyer. Meyer doesn’t pepper her prose with teen lingo, and thus has avoided the pitfall of appearing dated and uncool. She won scores of teens over because she didn’t try too hard.
While we’re on this topic, don’t try to cheat by creating your own teen lingo around the product. Let them create their own. Then, and only then, are you allowed to swoop in and use it to your advantage. If you try to hand feed them a phrase, it will inevitably fail. The hand-fed technique may fly for younger, more impressionable and jingle-happy tweens, but media-bombarded teens are usually wise to such efforts. I repeat: teens will create their own terminology around your product, if indeed it’s meant to be.
Tags: copywriting, marketing, teens
