Teen Trends!

I was a teen years ago and we had a meeting today on generation of ideas to market a product targetted at teens.

We had people from agencies who track evolving trends and help position the products acccordingly.

To me, teens are eternal. The insights dont change, its expression evolve with time following the evolution of the challens of communications.

What are today's teen doing?

1. They are persuing a second self and spending money on it. To me, its akin to excapism and a tacit acceptance of limitations in life. In otherwords, its cheap way of experience something which is not real and long lasting.

2. Emo is the in thing. Emo is cool, emo is non destructive, emo is brooding, aloof, disciplined. Every emo got the same look and feel about them. Being same in the group, emo seeks to be different for the rest.

Punks are loathed as vulger and destructive. We can blame them but its in a way inevitable to be so when there one lives in hopelessness and blind to any dreams.

Hence, inculcate hope and dream in a punk to kill him/her.

3. They blog in abundance and share everything with some pretence. Its the modern age extension of fitting in & belonging virtually as well.

4. They rebel. They want to find their place in the sun and struggle to prove that they are grown up enough to handle themself. In the process, they get messed up. If teens are having sex earlier these days, its a loud cry for independence and acceptance as adult.

Teens are in fact the reflection of their parents.

5. They want to be cool and make a statement. Well who doesnt?

6. Teens are the last believer in purity and sactity of life. They still believe that life could be just and ideal and they rebel to accept that its not going to be so.

7. Teens lack confidence and they experiement with anything and everything that will suppress the inner insecurity and give them the confidence to really accept and show the world who they are.

8. Teens are not mature in a worldly way and that tiny pimple on her face can play havoc to her self esteem, this aa sucess of marketeers. She will only grow up to realise looks do matter but if pimples are inevitable, then she just need to figure out how to make a statement with her pimples.

9. Teens will do what their parents ask then not to do. Parents do look dated to the teens since4 parents lack the energy and the drive and the hope that teens possess. Parents are weathered, beaten and shaped by lifetime of experience which made sure that they learn to moperate within boundaried and to teens, boundaries are just plain anethema.