Tween marketing: 'walking billboards' og forbrugeradfærd

Marketers are moving down the age-scale and target the so-called tweens as walking billboards.

T

weens are now the new target for marketers, and it is extremely successful, from the year of 2004 to the year of 2005, the money spend on tweens has increased from $10.5 billion to $11.5 billion.

The so-called tweens are children in the age 8-12; children that are no longer children, but have yet not become teenagers.

For a long time Teenagers have been influenced by the media and advertising, but it is no longer enough, marketers see a huge opportunity in tween-marketing.

Plays with insecurity

As a tween it is very important to fit in and to create a good image. This causes an increasing demand in clothes, music, gadgets etc.

For a long time marketers has taken advantage of the insecurity of teenager, but as kids tend to grow up faster, they are now turning the advertising to children of a younger age. Young people are seeing advertising with extremely skinny and unnaturally beautiful models, and it creates an unhealthy and impossible view of what people are supposed to look like.

Walking billboards

Many companies are using a new method of advertising to get to the tween. The marketing method is called “buzz marketing” where companies choose different kids to become what some might call walking billboards. The concepts is about choosing the “coolest” kids in a community and get them to wear or use products from a company, so that they will appear “cooler” and in that way