Youth movement: Marketing wireless to the teen crowd

Ten- to 18-year-olds are some of the most prolific users of cell phones and pagers, but wireless providers often overlook this youth segment.

Wireless providers are only marketing to this demographic sporadically, according to a recent Mercer Management Consulting survey of 400 pre-teens and teens. It found that telephone habits start early and reach a peak of nearly 12 hours per week of talk time in the middle teen years. And while teenagers recognize names such as AT&T and Cellular One, these companies may not be doing all they can to tap this burgeoning market.

"Marketers are asking, `What do 25- to 55-year-old adults want?' That's where the big money is," said John Hanson, a vice president at Mercer Management Consulting. "But in addition, there are very profitable pockets of consumers. We've known since the Princess phone that this is a communications-intensive segment."

Many of the brands best known by the 10- to 18-year-old market were cell phones and pager manufacturers, including Nokia and Motorola. The ramification for operators: "If my equipment maker's brand is better known than I am, it makes a big deal what equipment provider I go with," Hanson said.

Motorola was once a weak brand whose name disappeared when service providers slapped their logos on its cell phones.

Now the company has rebuilt its brand into a well-recognized name. In Mercer's survey, Motorola was the most recognized pager company with 88% awareness among respondents. Although the teenage market has been a loyal customer base for Motorola, the traditional paging and messaging business has been flat the past couple of years, said Allan Spiro, marketing manager in Motorola's messaging group.

Hoping for a resurgence, Motorola introduced in May the Talkabout T900 personal interactive communicator (PIC), a low-cost, two-way wireless messaging device targeted at young adults. "It's geared toward young adults age 18 to 24 and young families, but it will bleed on both ends," Spiro said. The T900 comes in four colors - aqua ice, raspberry ice, mystic blue and opaque black - and the marketing message continually hints at product benefits suited to youngsters.

For example, in marketing collateral, the company points out that the T900 PIC has backlighting on the display and keyboard that "makes it possible to use the device in low-light conditions or dark places such as a dance club or a movie theater."

The T900 also carries a suggested retail price of less than $200 and a monthly service fee of $15 to $20. "This is a very cost-sensitive market, although they have a lot of disposable income," Spiro said.

Ninety-five percent of Motorola's promotions and advertising for the T900 will target the youth market. The launch event in New York featured a hip-hop theater troupe and focused on editors of youth-oriented publications rather than the traditional technology press. T900's were given to the nominees of the MTV movie awards, and Motorola is sponsoring ESPN's summer X Games.

The Internet also will be a key part of the messaging strategy, as Motorola plans to try more creative, underground-type promotions, Spiro said.

"While everybody loves cellular phones, there's a huge market that is data-centric," Spiro said. "Young people have grown up with the Internet. Sending messages back and forth on a keyboard is a natural way to communicate for them. In focus groups, subjects said, `We want to be able to carry on conversations without talking.' Hence the tagline for the T900 campaign: `Talk without talking.'"

Motorola also was encouraged by the take-off of short messaging services over GSM phones in Europe. Global customer usage hit 5 million messages worldwide in March 2000, according to the GSM Association, and by December the monthly traffic total is expected to reach 10 billion messages.

"People are using their cell phones for what the Talkabout T900 does," Spiro said, "and GSM providers haven't even been pushing that feature."

There is backlash potential to marketing to pre-teens and teens - namely, forgetting to include parents on the value proposition. "The last thing you want to be seen as doing is marketing to impressionable kids irresponsibly," Hanson said. To that end, Motorola promises "peace of mind" with the T900, encouraging youngsters to send text messages to update their parents on their whereabouts.

"It's already pretty well-established that parents and kids coexist in a wide range of communications purchasing decisions," Hanson said. "You can do it in a way that is not troublesome."