Online Surveys Key to Gathering Information About Teen Girls

Selling to Kids, March 31, 1999

NEW YORK - Girls reveal information online that they would never say in a focus group, says Isabel Walcott, president at SmartGirl Internette Inc. Online they'll talk about fighting with mom, getting high and having sex.

The relationship Walcott has created with girls online is a lesson in the type of research media teen and tween girls will respond to. The relationship also offers insight into potential products and partnership ideas. Walcott offered some of that insight at last week's BrainCamp3 seminar here.

Take laundry detergent, says Walcott, whose company surveys girls 12 to 19 on its Web site, www.smartgirl.com. SmartGirl research shows that 85 percent of teen girls do laundry for themselves or for the family and they can pick the detergent. The majority of them like Tide, "probably because it's the biggest. But what if you created a brand that's cool and advertised it in YM and Seventeen?"

American girls spent $80 billion in 1998. They make their own purchasing decisions and influence their parents' major purchases. They also come with a paradox marketers should recognize, says Walcott. They're "romantic, idealistic and extremely nave. They think the boy who says he loves them will marry them." But at the same time, "they're cynical, rebellious and jaded. They've been overmarketed to, inundated with messages and they've become skilled at tuning things out."

They believe in feminist messages - that girls are as smart as boys and should be paid as much - but not that they're feminists. They don't see themselves as victims. And they like computers, cars, skateboards, and other sports equipment. With its "I can be anything" campaign, Mattel [MAT], which bought Purple Moon earlier this month, showed it's in tune with that attitude, says Walcott.

Humor, Music Reach Girls

With more than 1,000 girls visiting each day, Walcott has found that girls like:

* Cool people: Think of the Gap ads showing talented people as individuals. "There's no voiceover that says, `these people are cool,' but they're jamming, doing cool things."

* Humor: The Always sanitary-pad campaign took the concept of menstrual pads, added animation and made it funny. Teens love reading cartoons about something embarrassing happening to someone else. The scientific approach - someone pouring blue liquid on the pad - does not work with this audience. Embarrassing humor also sells the Old Navy ads. They're popular because they're so dumb. "How embarrassing," girls say. And they're cultish. Girls know every word of the Performance Fleece songs, says Walcott.

* Music and positive messages: It's no accident that the song, "I believe I can fly" did so well, she says. and;

* Cute animals.

Advertisers and marketers that flop with girls often make these blunders, Walcott says. They:

* Try to talk like teens. Language varies from school to school and clique to clique. It's much better to talk like adults;

* Start with incorrect assumptions. Nike [NKE] was doing well with ads that gave statistics about the positive effects of sports playing on girls. "Now they're making a huge error with their ad that asks 'think of a hero... how come you didn't think of a woman?' Girls do think of a woman," Walcott says;

* Get really sexy. Especially a blunder for girls ages 12 to 14. A lot of girls are uncomfortable with sexy images, even if they're having sex;

* Show starving or unhappy people. Girls want to see smiles. They hated Kate Moss when she was emaciated;

* Tell girls what to do. They really hate it because they get too much of that in their lives; and

* Talk to them through experts. Girls are more informed by their own sense of self, their need to be special and their peers.

Research Tactics

Walcott has been researching girls online since early 1996 and recently signed a contract with YM so that publisher could garner information about former subscribers and from people who don't like the magazine. Girls have been going to the site based on word of mouth. They can write reviews, search for news and information, participate in a chat session or respond to surveys. Users are asked not to respond to the same survey more than once.

Walcott doesn't pay girls for survey responses because she believes the responses will be less serious and honest. "If you incentivizing them, you're incentivizing them to lie." What's more, she says, the higher-income girls she wants to hear from are less likely to respond to money. The Web site has no ads, but girls can read each others' product reviews on magazines, books or movies.

(Isabelle Wolcott, SmartGirl Internette Inc. 212/752-8300)

Old Navy In,  Tommy Out
SmartGirl's monthly survey says:

                 Girls like
* Delia's                  * Old Navy/Gap
* Abercrombie              * American Eagle
* khaki                    * lip gloss
* silver rings             * hair highlights

             On the way out
* Tommy                    * Nautica
* Polo                     * Nike
* goth, grunge             * Leo DiCaprio