Old Model For Marketing To Kids Is No Longer Viable, Research Firm Says

Personal-care companies need to evolve their techniques for marketing products to "Kid Nation," whose technology, brand savvy and unprecedented spending power make it an opportune target, according to a new report from Packaged Facts.

Traditionally, marketers have relied on aspirational marketing - "those in each kid age bracket look[ing] to those in older brackets for examples of how to dress" - to capture teen/tween grooming dollars, Packaged Facts says.

But the rise of Kid Nation demands that firms begin targeting the demographic more directly and as a whole, the researcher suggests.

Kid Nation is defined by Packaged Facts as the U.S. population of children (age 10 to 19) - "especially those who have reached puberty, which seeks romance, has real spending power and is highly brand-aware."

"In the modern world, with girls typically becoming women at 10 years old (compared to 14 in 1900), kids have adult concerns for longer stretches of their childhoods," Packaged Facts observes.

"Combine this factor with greater parental permissiveness, and yet greater parental concern for kids' physical and psychic safety; with cellular, cyber-communication, and computing technologies; with a worldliness borne of their parents' high rates of divorce - and teens and tweens are seen to have built their Nation as a fortress of narcissism, but also of solidarity with their peers."

Packaged Facts notes that Kid Nation - "the daughters and sons of Generation X, and the grandchildren of Baby Boomers" - has access to the beauty secrets of past generations via the Internet and television makeover shows.

At the same time, the demographic is more receptive to plastic surgery as a means of improving appearance, the research firm points out.

The level of sophistication - and psychological complexity - with which Kid Nation is approaching personal care warrants a more proactive marketing strategy than has traditionally been employed, Packaged Facts says.

"Clearly, HBC marketers need to transcend the aspirational approach and delve into teens/tweens' new media, from flash mobs to cellular texting."

The researcher also recommends that marketers explore possibilities connected to extreme sports and pursue alternative pop endorsements and licensing; it cites as an example Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. brand.

Ingenuity Needed To Address Stalling Market

Packaged Facts estimates that sales of grooming products purchased either by teens (age 15-18) and tweens (8-14), or by adults on their behalf, will total approximately $6.9 billion at year-end.

While the market's compound annual growth rate since 2003 is less than 3 percent, the large dollar base makes that increase "rosier" than it may seem, the researcher notes.

Skin care is most coveted by teens and tweens, accounting for $3.2 billion in retail dollars in 2007.

Over the next five years (2007-2012), while the nation's population as a whole is expected to grow 4 percent - and the 65-79 age bracket more than 14 percent - the 5-19 age group "is forecast to expand hardly at all," Packaged Facts notes, citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Worse, the number of kids possessing the greatest spending power, age 15 to 19, is actually projected to shrink by more than 4 percent during the span to under 21 million," while kids ages 10 to 14 "will virtually freeze at around 20 million," the firm adds.

However, personal-care firms already are taking measures to optimize performance within the stalling market.

Such measures take the form of "gameplans that target neglected teen and tween potentials via soft-positioning of existing 'adult' grooming items to kids and via cutting-edge tactics that include everything from brand-dedicated Web sites to product-placement deals to text-messaging."

The best way to reach Kid Nation, Packaged Facts says, is called the "three As" - "any medium, any place, any time."

Such an approach involves a mix of old and new media - network television, billboards, Web sites, cellular, etc. - and/or marketing modes, including flash mobs, public relations, sponsorships and the like, the firm says.

Johnson and Johnson has capitalized on the influence of new media by arranging with the producers of popular Web series "Lonelygirl15" to work its Neutrogena brand into each "webisode," according to the June 20, 2007 issue of "Daily Variety," Packaged Facts notes.

"The plan is to go far beyond routine product placement via introduction of a new character - a young scientist whose job it is to develop Neutrogena products."

There is opportunity also to be found in numerous sites modeled after Second Life, a virtual world introduced in 2003 (¹ (Also see "Coty CEO Advises Firms To Go Virtual, Cash In On Celebrity Mania" - HBW Insight, 9 Apr, 2007.), p. 11).

Such Internet-based, 3-D environments offer users "friends, discos, parties, families, monetary currencies and, of course, retail storefronts - except that purchases of sneakers or purses or fancy HBC all translate into real dollars spent and into real merchandise delivered to their doors," the researcher says.

Packaged Facts projects that online purchasing of personal-care products will increase among teens going forward.

Currently, the bulk (70 percent) of retail sales attributable to teens occurs at the mass level (mainstream supermarkets, chain drugstores, mass merchandisers), the firm says.

The overall teen/tween personal-care market will break $8.4 billion in 2012, the researcher predicts.

"It seems incredible that in 2007 many teen/tween grooming marketers are positioning or even soft-positioning to these age groups for the first time, while other marketers are only just re-evaluating such efforts," Packaged Facts concludes.

- Ryan Nelson ([email protected])