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Reaching out to youth - a good marketing strategy
TEEN editorial
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
In the fast-paced arena of commercial marketing, nothing works harder at promoting products than advertisements, and by utilising all forms of the media, companies have gone above and beyond to ensure that their goods and services reach intended audiences.
It is no new discovery that the be all and end all of business ventures is to turn a profit. When this is coupled with the fact that there is an ever-increasing market for public consumption, then the need for a fresh, appealing and intellectually strategised advertisement is evident in order to get the public involved.
And that is where we come in.
Advertisements have covered just about every area of life from human interests to entertainment, education and sports. The 'Digicel Y Files', How To Use a Condom, Claro, and Taboo commercials are just a few of the many advertisement that utilise the youth in campaigns.
We, the young consumers, are drawn to ourselves. We like to see our friends, neighbours and classmates on television and on billboards. Advertisers know this.
It is even closer to home than we think, with the extreme levels to which advertisers go in order to get their brands out there for public consumption. Yes, an estimated $350 billion is spent on advertising worldwide, and products on the Jamaican market are heavily invested to keep the money coming in for the advertisers.
In fact, there has been a new revolution in the advertising industry. Yes, there is more attention being placed on the spending power of the youth, and advertisers are making their products more attractive to youngsters. Just check out the advertisements on local television stations and you will realise that the major players are the children and TEENs who influence, to some degree, their parents' spending habits.
Many children spend the majority of their time watching television. The best way to get to the parents, who more often than not control the spending, is to get to the kids and young adults first. After all, most parents look to their children for advice when they are buying products for both themselves and their children.
To tighten their hold on their audiences and increase their customers, advertisers have resorted to placing the emphasis on using young people in their advertisements. By doing this they create an environment with which the youth can identify. They also use us TEENS as focus groups to provide a foundation for the advertisements.
For this, there is a lot less sexual content placed in advertisements and more facts and figures to which the consumer can relate. We have also come to see a changing of the guard in marketing as more and more companies are choosing to market their products as necessary, efficient tools instead of fancy things that we might just want.
In these harsh economic times, innovative and out-of-the-box marketing styles are going to be key in getting consumers to spend the little money they have on products. It is in that vein that we must applaud the marketing companies and departments who have sought to reach out to the youth as they are the future of spending and do, in some respect, influence current spending. This will no doubt help to improve their bottom line and help our country rise from its current economic situation.
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