Pop! Goes the Brilliant Marketing Strategy: Teen Vogue Gets it Right

As any teen fashionista knows, shopping malls are SO yesterday. To get a head start on the hottest trends, fashion-savvy teens are browsing online boutiques, Googling their favorite designers and devouring images from the hippest fashion blogs. And then there's Fashion Week.

Which is why Teen Vogue is so smart to drop their pop-up mall store strategy and move to Lincoln Square where the real action is about to begin. As Ad Age reports, Teen Vogue's "Haute Spot" will be open from Sept. 8 through Sept. 15, including makeovers sponsored by Maybelline, book signings, IMG Worldwide casting agents, fashion bloggers and editors, and "screenings" where visitors can view runway show videos.

Okay, so it's not like anyone is going to actually get a front-row seat at Fashion Week, but it's pretty darn close to the action, and a brilliant marketing promotion. Here's how Teen Vogue gets it right:

1. Fashion focus. Teen Vogue isn't another run-of-the-mill teen magazine. It's the sister publication of Vogue and that means fashion, fashion, fashion.

2. Awareness of core audience trends. The trendiest, savviest, most fashion-forward youth aren't shopping at the mall. Or maybe they are... but they no longer want to admit that. Downtown New York City in the middle of Fashion Week is way, way cooler.

3. Perfect partnerships. While Maybelline is not exactly high fashion, it's price point and accessibility is perfect for teens. Paired with makeovers, style experts and runway videos, the package is sure to draw visitors in.

4. Image is everything. Did someone say casting agents?? Attracting a bunch of gorgeous would-be models is sure to draw in... more gorgeous would-be models. Not to mention anyone who wants to be seen standing next to a gorgeous would-be model.

5. Brand synergy. The entire promotion not only promotes the magazine Teen Vogue and its partners, but everything the brand stands for. Fashion, high style, and savvy insider tips. Oh yeah, and high magazine sales, too.

Scholastic Ceases In-School Corporate Propaganda Program

Way to go Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood! After more than 55,000 people signed a petition through Change.org last May, Scholastic has just announced that it will limit its “InSchool Marketing” program so that school kids are less subjected to corporate marketing propaganda via their classroom materials.

The black mark on Scholastic’s image began with coal, a lesson packet paid for by the American Coal Foundation, which contained all kinds of information about benefits of coal - but none of the nasty stuff like toxic waste and greenhouse gases. Oops.

So now Scholastic is on the retreat. According to an article in this week’s New York Times, “in addition to the coal curriculum, Scholastic distributed a program stressing the environmental wrongs of plastic water bottles, sponsored by Brita, which sells water filters. It also had a $3 million Microsoft campaign in which schools could earn points toward prizes for each Microsoft search, as well as a program featuring Playmobil’s small plastic figures. Those programs have ended, according to Kyle Good, a Scholastic spokeswoman — and last week, after a reporter inquired about them, all traces of them were removed from the Scholastic Web site, as other programs, sponsored by Disney, Nestlé and Shell, already had been.”

Cool! Gotta love what can happen when parents speak out. As for me, I'm not really sure why corporate marketing has any place in school curriculum in the first place, but maybe that's just me.

Rethinking kids, COPPA and online safety

Do you let your kids use Facebook? MySpace? Club Penguin? Webkinz? How about Imbee, KidsWorld, Togetherville, Everloop or Yoursphere?

Maybe you haven’t even heard of some of these sites. Which is too bad, since most are terrific and offer wonderful, safe online experiences for young children. Believe it or not, the tween space online is extremely competitive and has been for a long time. It’s also extremely difficult to create a sustainable business model. But not everyone knows that. On more than a few occasions, I’ve received calls from the CEOs of promising new startups, business plan and beta website in hand, claiming “we’re going to be the next Facebook for kids under age 13!”

The question we should all be asking ourselves is: do parents – or kids for that matter – even need or want a “Facebook for kids?” Isn't it just easier to lie about your kid's age? But wait - what kind of message does that send?

This recent NPR article, Social Networks: Thinking of the Children, got me thinking. The conversations still very much focuses on online safety. But is that even the main decision factor for parents?

When COPPA was enacted back in 1998, I was running a website for tweens called FreeZone.com. Online safety was a big deal for us and we worked closely with the FTC and CARU in getting it right. Chats were monitored. Ads were labeled. We had each and every parent fax in a signed registration form before we'd allow their kids to interact on the site. Yup, pretty labor intensive. Maybe that's why the site isn't around anymore.

We wrote to the FTC in 1999: “Our business is based on the highest possible safety and privacy standards that have become our competitive advantage in drawing kids into the FreeZone community. We are eager for technology to catch up to our standards, so we can implement more convenient and cost-effective ways to gain parental consent.”

Today online safety PSAs abound. It seems like there isn't a day or an hour that goes by without a well-informed article about online safety, cyberbullying, sexting,"Facebook depression," predators and the like. The general public is more aware. Yet COPPA hasn't changed since 1998. It's clunky and it forces tween sites to stay within antiquated boundary lines, creating a permissions process that is a pain in the ass for both parents and website developers. Meanwhile, Facebook is allowed to keep paving the way into the 21st century simply by stating that their site is open to anyone over 13 years of age. Leaving parents two choices:

1. Lie about my child's age and let them go on Facebook, where I will keep tabs on what they are doing.

Or

2. Let them play around on one of the tween sites listed above, safely, of course - which means active, parental involvement.

Hmmm.

Actually, there's a third choice: Skip any sort of online social networking until the child turns 13.

Crazy? That's what I'm going to do. Easy for me to say. I've got an 8 year-old and a 4 year old (neither of whom has expressed any interest in Facebook let alone any other social networking site) so ask me in a few years. Maybe this whole dilemma will be solved by then.

Guilt-Free Kids TV

Finally, a report on children's media that doesn’t make parents feel bad! Released this week in the UK as part of the Hello Campaign, an initiative focused on making communication a priority in homes and in schools, a quarter of parents who have young children admit using the television as a babysitter. And 70% percent of them do not feel guilty about it.

Surprising? Not really. Amazing? A little. Even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has long advocated or reduced screen time, setting guidelines that children watch no more than 2 hours of television per day, the data demonstrates that kids are watching much, much more than that. Which, we all know by now, can lead to problems. As recently as April of this year, a study came out linking kids TV to heart disease.

Feeling guilty yet? Don't. The reason why parents in the UK feel good about their children’s TV watching is because there are so many wonderful, educational shows. 42% of respondents said that quality children's television is a great way for kids to learn. It's all about context.

Take Babycenter's posts Why you should never feel guilty about kids watching TV and Watch that TV, guilt-free! CommonSense Media's Best TV for Kids provides even more reasons to enjoy a little screen time.

I also like what Dimitri A. Christakis and Frederick J. Zimmerman, authors of "The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids, have to say: "At its best, TV can educate and inspire. High-quality documentaries offer insights into history that no book can equal. Children's educational shows have the proven ability to help children learn to read to be kind, and to share. In short, when used appropriately, television has the power to expand horizons and help children's cognitive, social and emotional development."

Spokeswoman for the Hello campaign, Wendy Lee, also points out how parents can get more involved and use television as a launching point for communications in the home. "TV can be used as a fantastic opportunity to bring children's favourite characters and shows to life beyond the box as well... chatting about characters, making up stories and even acting out adventures can help parents develop their child's language and communication," she said.

In short, children's TV doesn't need to hide in the closet as a guilty, forbidden pleasure. And we as parents can actually admit to feeling good about it. Companies like my clients Ameba TV (http://amebatv.com) and The Mother Company (http://themotherco.com) are redefining screen time by offering high-quality, educational, slow-paced, commercial-free shows for kids - and that's something both parents and kids can feel pretty great about.

‘Baiting outrage’ and other social media marketing tactics

The way I see it, ABC News and the Today Show just ran a ten-minute infomercial for Abercrombie & Fitch. The lure? The “oversexualized” push up padded bikini on Abercrombie Kids. Mommy bloggers and social media parenting experts all took the bait and jumped right into the outrage feeding frenzy. It’s bad for girls self esteem. Who needs padding when you are 8? The only reason for a push up anything is to push sexuality.

Okay, okay, we get it.

Actually, we all got it a long time ago, as in the 1970s, which is why I think this whole outrage thing is kinda silly. Even my 8 year-old daughter was rolling her eyes at the experts on the Today Show this morning. “Bad for girls? Huh? It’s just a boring striped bathing suit.” And then... “Mommy, what does ‘oversexualization’ mean?”

Thank you, Meredith Vieira, for today’s word of the day!

Lucky for Abercrombie & Fitch, they’re back in the news as being an “edgy” brand targeting youth, which is exactly where they want to be. The moms who ban Barbies and Bratz dolls aren’t shopping there anyway, so for them, this latest stunt amounts to a whole lotta free publicity and traffic. I can just hear the A & F execs in their closed-door meetings... "oh yeah, nice boost in traffic... all we had to do is name the product 'push up' and then change it to something boring like 'triangle' and the hub-bub will be forgotten by tomorrow... meanwhile, sales are great."

Baiting outrage, a term coined by Amy Jussel, media literacy expert and founder/executive director of ShapingYouth.org, seems to be the new normal for going viral. Amy pointed me to a new Tufts study on media and incivility, further proof that the headlines just keep getting worse and worse even while the hard data on news and trends often proves otherwise.

Here’s the problem. Traditional marketing doesn’t really work anymore and we’re all getting a little tired of social media and blogging and e-mail marketing, with all of those #giveaways we can #win and #promo codes that are about to expire and #exclusive offers that aren’t really exclusive at all. Every marketer is clamoring for attention so it’s not surprising that “padded push up bikini for 7 year-olds” was able to cut through the clutter and actually grab out attention. Only… you’re smarter than that and you’re not going to fall for it next time. Right? Right.

I was in a client meeting this morning discussing – you guessed it – an upcoming marketing campaign for a product targeted to children and one of the partners mentioned in an aside, “You know... my husband is one of those tech people who’s always a year or two ahead of the trends. And guess what he just did? He erased his online profile. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare… poof! Gone.”

In a virtual world full of media frenzy – one that doesn’t necessarily mirror the real world we actually live in – erasing one’s frenzied social media presence has a lot of appeal.

So, marketers, how will you reach your customers then?