Teens are impulsive buyers, yet selective consumers. They have dollars you can have today because their income is so disposable. The catch is they must want your product. Low price-points do not drive their purchases. In other words, they will spend more on brands for which they have an affinity. This means that as a market, they can be extremely valuable if they have an emotional preference for your brand, or what we like to call “irrational brand loyalty.”

Teens speak in absolutes, which means if they’re aware of your brand, they either love it or hate it. This reflects the fact that teens are in the early stages of forming their identities and are constantly working to define themselves – by adopting select brands to help shape and communicate who they want to be.

Gaining teens’ irrational brand loyalty is a long-term investment for the success of your brand. Their preferences for certain brands extend beyond their youth into adulthood, making them lifelong consumers of your product or service. For this reason, it’s worth your time and money to develop a relationship with teens early on, while they’re actively looking to align themselves with brands that embody the type of person they want to be or lifestyle they want to live.

Teens also strongly influence their parents’ purchasing decisions. By engaging teens, you tap into an entire household of consumers – including parents and siblings – with one targeted strategy. If you’re smart about your communication strategy, teens and their networks will become your brand fanatics for life.

Although you can probably remember the days of social turbulence as a teenager, chances are, you’re no longer in touch with youth culture. Teens today are growing up with new technology, ever-changing communication techniques and increasingly immediate and inventive methods of gaining information. Of course, some universal truths stand the test of time – like the desire to belong or the need to push the limit. But tapping into the youth market requires more than an understanding of these truths; it depends upon your ability to stay connected to teens using their preferred outlets.

The most successful brands don’t have consumers; they have a following of brand fanatics. These fanatics adopt the brand as a part of themselves – and use it to help form and communicate their individual identities. Brink cultivates brand fanatics by engaging one key influencer at a time. By identifying these opinion leaders and using them as entry points into established networks of youth, Brink taps into hundreds or thousands of individuals with shared values through one connected person. This approach easily lends itself to the viral world and exponential growth of your brand.

Brink supports building positive relationships between brands and young consumers. We remain devoted to serving our clients in a socially responsible and ethical way.