Creating generation $: why the keen interest in the latest teen brands and fashion trends? Marketing executives recognize the potent buying power of a generation of youngsters raised on computers

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 21, 1999 | by Anne Veigle

It is no accident that Gap jeans outsell Levi's. Or that toddlers influence their parents' choice of car purchases. Or that children demand clothing with brand-name labels rather than their generic counterparts. Advertisers long have targeted their messages at children. And more than ever, those messages are sent via the Internet.

Marketers are scrambling to get online because it is cheaper than direct mail and reaches a select customer. But while corporate Websites targeting children may look harmless -- they post rules about privacy, require passwords and prohibit adults from conversing with kids -- their underlying purpose is to cultivate brand-name loyalty among kids

"Clearly, a broad strategy has been developed by marketers to do what I call the `brandwashing' of America," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education, a nonprofit group that works on privacy and related issues. "The Internet has created a platform for personalized media, which exacerbates the problem of brandwashing."

Since World War II, children have played an increasingly bigger role in U.S. consumer spending. The 1950s child lobbied for breakfast cereals and Barbie dolls advertised on cartoon programs. Kids today have wants far grander and much more expensive: Parents are spending billions of dollars outfitting their children in brandname clothing, not to mention sophisticated computer games, sporting goods and electronic equipment.

Child-related consumption shows no sign of slowing. The average teen spends about $300 a month of his or her own money, according to a survey of 1998 consumer spending by the polling firm Teenage Research Unlimited. Some of the teens earn money with part-time jobs; others are given money by their parents. The polling group estimates that teens' influence on family purchasing decisions contributed $47 billion to the economy last year.

Analysts say two main forces are propelling the spending: working parents tend to buy goods for their children to compensate for hours spent away from home, and divorced couples spend extra to clothe and entertain children in two or more households.

"I think what we're doing is meeting the material needs of children but not necessarily their nonmaterial needs," says Betsy Taylor, executive director of the Center for a New American Dream, a nonprofit group outside Washington devoted to reducing consumer waste. "Advertisers want us to satisfy those material needs."

As any parent can attest, advertisers' laserlike focus on the youth market is paying off. Teens, preoccupied with their appearance and identity, easily are lured into thinking that the right pair of sneakers will buy popularity.

"I like Nike. Everyone at school calls me `Nike Chic' because I wear Nike all of the time," one teen posts in a chat room on the Free Zone Website (www.freezone.com), owned by a Chicago-based media firm.

Another chat-room visitor disagrees. "It is tempting to buy Nike since everybody else wears it, but I just think it's totally wrong with their slaves [sweatshop labor], plus Adidas has more class. I love Adidas."

A third teen offers a conciliatory view: "I think Nike and Adidas are both cool, so even though they have slave labor in Third World countries, they both have cool clothes."

Cool is the goal, and that means higher-priced designer clothing. Teen magazines are stuffed with ads devoted to fashion, all modeled by young people with perfect bodies, skin and hair. Parents may scoff, forgetting their own years of must-have fashions, but the pressure in schools to attain a certain style can be intense.

"My daughter came home from school the other day and said, `Mom, I'm not cool,'" explains Taylor, a proponent of school uniforms. "It isn't right to have so much focus on appearance and fashion, but that is what a lot of these school cliques are about. And that is what the majority of advertising is centered on."

Many families give in to their children's wishes for bigger, better and more. Seven out of 10 children ages 6 to 17 own a videogame system, according to a 1998 Roper Starch survey. Half of the 1,000 children surveyed have a TV set in their room, while 86 percent have access to a VCR.

"We are investing billions of dollars in teaching our children to be consumers but little in educating them to be healthy individuals and citizens," says Chester of the Center for Media Education. "I think the problems are exacerbated by the Internet, which has created a platform for personalized media."

Parents need to step in and help children sort out the real from the contrived, experts say. One simple solution is to monitor commercial television and Websites, where advertising has great influence on young children. A second step is to start explaining -- around age 5 -- why advertisers want people to buy their products. It is useful to show children that two products can be exactly the same, though one has a "brand" name.

"The message is not that all advertising is bad, but that it can be so out of balance with reality," Taylor says. "In a way, what we're really doing is helping a child develop the ability to think about what their true wants and needs are vs. those suggested by advertisers."