How To Sell To Younger Consumers

What's the new crystal ball to some of the younger members of society? I'll give you a hint. It's something on-line. Give up? Well, it has to be the blog and chat room. Blogs and chat rooms are everywhere and for advertisers or marketers with goods to say, what easier way to find out want the consumer, particularly the pre teen and teen consumer that blogs so much, wants and needs to buy. And the 10 to 25 age group uses blogs and chat sites like no other.
No more does a company need to hire a marketing firm to conduct a consumer preference survey by phone, focus groups or just by hanging around schools and other youth centered places. There's the new and cheaper shortcut, blogs and chat rooms where the opinions, whims, and heart throbs of today's big spenders- the youth- are freely aired for marketers to hear. These are unbiased consumer opinions for the asking, and now many companies are using the chat/blog data to design and market programs for the young market. One big cell phone/communcation company says it picked basketball star Kobe Bryant as it's spokesperson after reading the blogs and listening in to the younger set (who are most the addicted to communication devices) raving about Kobe.
In a sense, the most intimate consumer preferences and turnoffs are free for the taking right on line, making market research cheaper and more accurate than ever before. Well..this is true to an extent. But what about new products. Reading blogs and listening in on chat lines is great fro telling what kids like, but what about future products? It takes instinct, vision and luck to know what the future star products will be.
Yes, those future winners have blogs and chats yet to be written and gabbed about. Still, it's interesting to note the change in how manufacturers prepare to propagandize the consumer into buying their "junk