Advertising and the Tween Market

The hottest market for advertisers is the "tween" market. A tween is a person between the ages of nine and twelve years old. Advertisers guess that tweens will spend $39 billion a year on different products. Kids are the greatest influence in the buying world! This means that many ads are directed at tweens. The hope is that tweens will spend their money, or their parents' money, on specific products. It is important to know how advertisers try to get tweens to buy things.

Every day thousands of images stream through the TV, the Internet, and magazines. These images try to convince people to buy something. Advertisers must work hard to get people to buy a product. Just think of the large number of soda choices on the market. Advertisers for each brand try to convince people to buy that soda. First, advertisers must identify an audience. People at different ages like different things. Advertisers must figure out how to get their message out to a particular "target" audience. They must place the ad where its message will be seen by the greatest number of the right kind of people. Perhaps advertisers will choose an Internet pop-up or an ad in a magazine or on TV. Advertising is like a big game and the goal is to convince people to buy things.

Just as it is important for advertisers to target a market, it is also important for the consumer, or buyer, to carefully choose what to buy. To do this, consumers must understand how advertisers try to get people to buy something. Advertisers use several different methods to sell their products. Think about a popular soda ad. How did the advertiser try to get people to buy the soda? What about the taste? After all, people buy soda to drink. Should the ad include a description of how the soda tastes? That is hard to show. The advertisers must think of another way to sell the soda. One of the most basic goals of advertising is to make people think about what it would be like to have the product. There are many different ways to do this.

Often advertisers try to get people to buy their product by making them think that everyone else buys it. This technique is called "bandwagon." Think about the example of soda and the tween market. One way to use bandwagon to sell a brand of soda is to show a group of kids between nine and twelve, all drinking that kind of soda and having fun. That way young people looking at the ad might think that they would enjoy the soda since other people their age must be enjoying it. Sometimes an ad for a product might really look as if it is selling peer popularity along with the product.

A different way to appeal to a group of people is to tell them that a product is the newest and coolest thing. One way to do this is to make viewers think they should be the first ones to try a product. Sometimes this includes something similar to bandwagon. People watching the ad are led to think that if they want to be cool they should buy the product. In a soda ad, the people might be dressed a certain way and be drinking the soda while doing something that seems cool to do. This way of convincing people is called snob appeal.

Another powerful technique is the testimonial. A testimonial features a celebrity or someone you are supposed to trust who seems to know about the product. For instance, an ad showing a teacher saying that a certain book helped students do well in a class would be a testimonial. An athlete shown talking about how a certain sports shoe helps her compete well is another example of a testimonial. Advertisers match the person acting in the ad to the product and to the audience. If a consumer were already going to buy a sports shoe, having a famous athlete selling the shoe might persuade the person to buy that particular brand of shoe.

Sometimes, advertisers use someone or something well known to sell an unrelated product. For example, some sodas might be sold by pop stars. What does a pop star know about soda? Advertisers hope that people who see the ad like the pop star and want to drink the same thing the star does. This also happens with music. Advertisers might pair a popular and famous song with what they are selling by using the song as the sound track for the ad. They think that if people like the song they may buy what the ad is selling.

These are not the only ways advertisers try to get people to buy what they are selling. As media changes, so must advertising. Now people can fast forward through ads while watching their favorite shows. How can products be sold if people do not watch the ads? This is where product placement comes in. A product is placed in the show, for instance, the main character is seen drinking a soda. The soda can and label are shown for several seconds. Advertisers hope that people who like that character will remember the scene and buy that soda.

Smart consumers understand the ways that advertisements make products appear desirable. Advertisers know a lot about making their products look good to tweens who can buy their products. Tweens spend billions of dollars each year on the products they want. They have a lot of power in deciding what products will be popular and will make money. It is up to individual consumers in the tween market to be aware of what advertisers are doing to convince them how to spend their money.

1.	FACT AND OPINION Is this sentence a fact or an opinion? How can you tell?
2.	PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUE What word does the author use to persuade the reader?
3.	AUTHOR'S PURPOSE Why does the author compare advertising to a game?
4.	PRIOR KNOWLEDGE Have you ever bought something because you saw an ad for it? Why?
5.	CONNECT Do you think you would buy the soda if you saw an ad like this? Why or why not?
6.	COMPARE AND CONTRAST How is this type of ad like an ad that uses the bandwagon technique?
7.	FACT AND OPINION Is this sentence a fact or an opinion? How can you tell?
8.	COMPARE AND CONTRAST What is the difference between a testimonial and the bandwagon technique?
9.	FACT AND OPINION Is this sentence a fact or an opinion? How can you tell?
10.	AUTHOR'S PURPOSE Why did the author write this essay?