The survey tested 47 brands and Apple’s iPod emerged as the brand “absolutely essential to teens”—a brand that was not only a favorite, but defining their generation. Other key brands included American Eagle Outfitters, Axe, Baby Phat, Facebook, Google, Hollister Co., MTV, MySpace, Vans and YouTube.
One of the marketers [Rahda Subramanyam, vp of research and planning for MTV Networks kids and family group] quoted in the article in Brand Week that reports on this study remarked on the influence that parents have with their teens:
Brands are so concerned about focusing on influential teens, she said, meanwhile “parents can be the biggest influencer, especially when it comes to big-ticket items.”
From my standpoint, this is a real mixed bag of brands. I’ve inserted URLs for the brand websites in the list above so you can do some side by side comparisons. Axe’s site is entirely a Flash site-but Google’s isn’t. Nor is MySpace’s or Facebook’s site. And it’s interesting to take a look at the websites of these brands-and compare them to college and university websites.
Interestingly enough, “TV (per 32% of respondents) and magazine advertising (28%) still proved to be the most influential forms of media” among these teens.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?