Now, a study conducted by Burson-Marsteller in partnership with Penn, Schoen & Berland has released a study called “The Youth-fluentials,” detailing characteristics of persuasive youth ages 10 to 18.
Nearly 100% of the group said they influenced their friends’ decisions about clothes and music, and over 80% carried weight with their parents’ purchasing decisions.
Kids and Teens Influencing Purchases – eMarketer
I love this article. I am not complaining. The more data that can be recieved from these populations the better. It helps the marketers AND the content makers.
BUT… Please Stop combining 10 year olds with 18 year olds!
I totally buy the assertion that a 10-13 year old can influence their parents food and clothing choices. I even buy that a 15 or 16 year old can influence their parent’s car purchases. But I want to meet the parent of a 10 or 11 year old that actualy listens to their kid in their car purchase. MAYBE there is a especially cunning automobile afficianado developing in your 4th grade son or daughter. But if there is, I highly doubt they have the comprehensive lay of the land knowledge to understand all the variables that go into a car purchase. If they do, they are an anomoly and large scale marketing campaigns should not be designed around their existence, imho.
I focus on small age ranges of “kids” in the various projects I do – 10-12, 6-9, 3-6, etc. Each of these age groups has widely varying characteristics from the next, as well as within the range. To lump 10-12 with the 15-18 demo seems similar to me as combining goth and preppy demos. SURE there are a couple similarities, but they are more differences. Lumping the age groups together also leads to false inferences. I would be fascinated to know the more targeted demo numbers – do the %s change when you look at 10-13 vs 14-18?
And for those cases where that 11 year old is a wiz kid in a certain area, take advantage of the opportunity to help them out. If your kid knows a ton about technology and you want to involve them in the purchase for your family’s new computer or family cell phone plan, make it a group learning project. See it as an opportunity for you to learn more about that subject, and also for you to get to know your kid more. Sure they learn a lesson from making the decision on their own and “just doing it” for their parent, but they learn a more powerful one if it’s a group effort.
(Wow, that was quite the high horse post – eek 🙂 )
technorati tags:tween, marketing, influencer, teen, kids
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Joi Podgorny 