Advanced and relaxed: teens as shoppers

Today's teens are a very valuable but challenging audience in terms of marketing. They are trendy but independent; active, but not holding attention on anything for a long time; open but mistrustful. What kind of consumer behavior do they have and how to make friends with them today?

Portrait in youth

First, let's define the terms. Demographers call adolescents people between the ages of 12 and 17 who, from a psychophysical point of view, are in an intermediate state between childhood and adolescence. Marketers who define age groups in terms of purchasing power capture a wider interval - 12-19 years, dividing it into periods of 12-15 and 15-19 years.

According to the research company TNS, there are 13,4 million teenagers in Russia, which is equivalent to the whole population of Cambodia. Of these, at the age of 12-15 years - 5,6 million people. All these people are qualitatively different from their predecessors, today they are already young people aged 25 to 35 years. Today's adolescents are unaware of scarcity and perceive a wide range of goods and services as the norm. They are familiar with computers and the Internet since childhood: 92% of Russian teenagers living in cities are constantly in the online environment and can easily navigate in the abundance of information. Modern adolescents in general can be called advanced-relaxed: everyone knows how, everyone knows, but they, accustomed to wealth, have nothing to fight for. They are sure that everything will come by itself, you just need to wait.

Leo Tolstoy not unreasonably stated that "happy is he who is happy at home." Two-thirds of today's adolescents live in full families, and unlike the previous generation, they are less and less striving to get away from communicating with their parents, who have also changed a lot for the better. According to sociologists from TNS, the opinion of friends affects only 32% of teenagers. Moms (95%), dads (70%), and grandparents (39%) enjoy great authority.

Teens as shoppers

“On average, a Russian teenager spends 600-800 rubles a week, although Muscovites and Petersburgers are more prosperous: they spend 1500 and 1000 rubles a week, respectively. The purchase of clothes, shoes, accessories makes up about 35% of their budget, - says Tatyana Komissarova, Dean of the Higher School of Marketing and Business Development, SU-HSE. - Moreover, 74% of teenagers take money from their parents and grandmothers, and there are only 10% of working teenagers. They spend money wisely: teenagers spend about 30% of their pocket money on gadgets, girls - on perfumes and cosmetics, and boys - on shoes. "

Surveys show that today's teenagers are not much influenced by brands: only for 30% of them the brand matters, the rest is important to create your own style. But this does not make it easier to find a way to the heart of a teenage consumer.

“A girl under the age of 12 doesn't care that a shoe brand is called Kotofey, Zebra or Antelope in a childish way. But as soon as she grows up, she is already embarrassed to say at school that her mother bought these chic shoes in one of the children's shoe stores, - says Alexander Vozhdaev, director of advertising for the manufacturer of children's shoes Zebra. - If teenage boys still go to buy shoes with their parents, then girls at this age already want to choose their own wardrobe. Therefore, we try to make the brand more foreign in design, design and verbally. Recently we have a line "Zebra-girl" for girls. It has a different logo, more stylish packaging and a beautiful design of the shoes themselves. The assortment includes shoes, pumps, ballet flats from size 35 to 39 ”.

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“When choosing shoes, a teenager wants to look older,” says Sergei Klyushin, deputy general director of Parkomtorg Perviy, which manages the Paris Commune brand. - Therefore, our entire line of teenage collection repeats adult models. Of course, in models for girls, heels are not big, but they are still there, and they clatter effectively. "

Trusting, but verifying

Online shopping is the second most popular activity for teenagers on the Internet after communication on social networks. They most often enter online stores from phones and smartphones: statistics show that almost every teenager has a means of communication with the Internet. “Teenagers are prone to spontaneous purchases, but this is prepared spontaneity,” notes Tatyana Komissarova. “They have already seen these products on the Internet, on TV, in magazines, at their friends' homes.” By the way, TV is no less a close friend of a teenager than the Internet. On average, he spends 12 hours a week watching his favorite channels, including TNT and STS, and 11 hours on the Internet.

Oddly enough, today's adolescents are not passive consumers of advertising information. On the one hand, they are really very open - they are happy to subscribe to e-mail and sms-mailings from manufacturers, they are friends with brands on social networks, but on the other hand, teenagers read reviews about products very carefully before buying and actively write them themselves.

The older the child, the more independence he shows when making a purchase, and the more advertising should be aimed at him, and not at his parents. Today's adolescents are able to convincingly convince adults of the need to purchase a particular product.

Talking about successful advertising strategies for working with a teenage audience, Tatyana Komissarova expressed the opinion that advertising aimed at teenagers should create an emotional reaction and demonstrate that, thanks to the possession of the product, the teenager will be in the center of attention of his friends. Oleg Ulyansky, executive director of the children's Internet portal Tvidi.ru, believes that the main thing is to turn the advertising campaign into a game: by playing with the teenager, the brand becomes his friend. Marketers from Analpa Inc, distributor of the youth brands Keddo and Betsy, rely on interactivity, competition, entertainment and multi-channel to promote their brands. “The key to the success of any advertising is perfect hitting the target audience,” comments Analpa Inc. - A great illustration of such a hit is the autumn-winter campaign of the Keddo brand. As a photo model, we invited the famous video blogger Roma Acorn, the idol of Russian teenagers. And then they used the capabilities of social networks VKontakte and Facebook: they posted a photo session in the Keddo group, launched a contest, in which more than 35 thousand people took part in just a month, and reminded of themselves with a stylish backstage shooting. In the future, we plan to continue cooperation with well-known bloggers and other idols of youth. "

By the way, if we talk about promotion with the help of stars, according to TNS, the most popular among adolescents are Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, David Beckham, as well as Russian athletes Maria Sharapova, Fedor Emelianenko, Evgeni Plushenko, Igor Akinfeev.

Many youth brands focus on the creativity and visual expression that today's teenagers love. Examples are contests for the most creative photography in branded shoes, as did the shoe store XXI Century, which gave the winner a pair of new Dr. Martins, the brands Keddo and Betsy, which awarded the lucky ones with tablets, and the Converse brand, which presented stylish sneakers to the authors of the best travel photos.

All of these factors - the ability to express oneself, become visible among peers and be successful in the future - can be used in a marketing campaign designed to build the trust of teenagers.