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| Whether you're marketing kids' brands or grown-ups' brands, consider tweens as a potential target |
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They have huge spending power in their own right and strongly influence brand choice for many high price family purchases. A one-target marketing strategy may no longer be enough. Consider one strategy that appeals to tweens, another that appeals to tweens and their parents, and a third that focuses just on adults.
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| Make ethics your number one priority when marketing to tweens |
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Produce quality products that are safe and make sure your messages are safe
Keep your word - don't abuse the trust children put in you or they'll see through you
Be honest - kids never forget a bad experience
Don't abuse the freedom you have in marketing to kids - earn and maintain trust from both parents and children
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| Build a brand story tweens believe |
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Brands are as popular with today's tweens as they ever were. They have become an integral part of the way they define themselves. But what tweens expect from brands couldn't be more different from the expectations of previous generations. Attitude branding is on the rise. Brands that are human, have opinions and attitudes, and can honestly portray strength and reveal weakness, will be the survivors.
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| Make sure your brand places tweens in the centre of a world they admire and which they aspire to |
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Six core values drive all successful marketing to tweens. They are fantasy, mastery, love, fear, stability and humour. Remember that whether we like it or not, gender stereotypes are still alive.
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| Make your brand work around how tweens live, and not around traditional business hours |
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Once they reach the age of 8 or 9, today's kids are a 24/7 generation and expect 24/7 brands and instant gratification.
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| Run your marketing team like a "Brand War Room" |
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While many classic marketing approaches will still apply, interactive communication means that future campaigns are likely to run in real time. Flexibility to change direction, media, tools and message will be key. Teams of marketers will need to operate 24/7, constantly monitoring their marketplace.
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| Make sure your concept has potential to keep evolving over time |
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Today's tweens thrive on upgrades. In marketing planning, the luxury of time has gone - product evolution needs to happen over weeks and months, not years.
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| Build a peer-to-peer marketing program around community leaders and put tweens at the centre, not the brand. Develop viral marketing tools to enable tweens to market for you |
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Belonging to a group is a crucial part of tween life. Tweens look up to their leaders and inspire each other. Peer-to-peer marketing will play an increasingly important role in creating successful tween brands.
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| Make sure you're where your target is - think and act mobile: m-branding is the way forward |
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Marketers can no longer focus on messages that have a fixed position. Tweens will no longer be informed by traditional media. TV ads will be used to inspire, but interactive channels will do the informing.
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| Talk to your ad agency about Media Neutral, or Intelligent Media Planning |
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Maximise your mix of channels to reach your target. Consider using viral campaigns, the Internet, events, product placement, mobile phones etc., instead of or as well as more traditional media. But make sure you integrate your communication so that it works across all channels.
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| Make sure you understand about virtual worlds and the interactive games today's tweens play |
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They may soon become one of the most important forums for tween interaction alongside the telephone and e-mail.
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| Get to grips with 'tweenspeak' and the world in which it operates |
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In future, tweens will have several online nicknames or characters they inhabit and their own language for communicating on the Internet/texting.
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| Finally, be flexible and patient with what might seem like your own lack of understanding of how the tween world operates |
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Tweens hate to be sold to, but love to be respected. They want to be listened to, heard and understood. Spend time with them, listen to them talk, discover how they dream.
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