Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Girls Training Bras Are Out - Girls Lingerie is In

Brands like Victoria's Secret, Hot Topic, Urban Outfitters, and Justice are cashing in on the growing demand among middle school and high school girls for intimate apparel.

A decade ago girls had little choice in underwear; a training bra was often a plain garment bought at Target. No longer. “Sensuality and body image continues to be a message that young girls are seeing and are being exposed to in a much less controlled fashion perhaps than even 10, 12 years ago,” says Dan Stanek, executive vice president at consultancy Big Red Rooster. They’re aiming to imitate the lingerie styles worn by celebrities seen on the Web, he says.

Retailers are taking care to present the garments as cute vs. sexy, says Marcie Merriman, founder of consultancy PrimalGrowth. Still, the reality is that stores are “all going to say they’re targeting 18- to 22-year-olds, but the reality is you’re going to get the younger customer,” says Merriman.

Victoria’s Secret (part of Limited Brands) was among the first to tap the market, introducing Pink in 2004. The sub-brand is geared toward college girls, with logoed goods and brightly colored bras and panties. “When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be?” Stuart Burgdoerfer, Limited Brands’ chief financial officer asked at a conference last month. “They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.” Sales of lingerie for younger women are a $1.5 billion-a-year business for Victoria Secret's Pink line.

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/forget-training-bras-dot-girls-are-buying-lingerie

 

Study: Underage Drinkers Look to Small Number of Alcohol Brands

Branding plays a much bigger role in the alcoholic beverages teens choose to drink than it does for adults, according to new research.

A study from Johns Hopkins University polled more than 1,000 underage drinkers between 13 and 20 about their alcohol consumption over the previous month, and found they favored a relatively small number of brands.

Leading the pack were Bud Light and Smirnoff Malt Beverages. About 28% of teens reported drinking Bud Light in the past month, and 17% had sipped Smirnoff Ice or one of the brand's other flavored malt drinks.

Budweiser and Smirnoff took the next highest spots as well: Nearly 15% of respondents had tried Budweiser beer, and nearly 13% reached for Smirnoff vodka. Coors Light, Jack Daniel's Bourbons, Corona Extra, Mike's, Captain Morgan Rums and Absolut Vodkas rounded out the rest of the top 10 brands.

It is significant that young drinkers reach for such a concentrated group of brands, study authors said. Eighteen alcohol brands account for 50% of the market share among underage drinkers, but 33 brands dominate half the market for drinkers of all ages.

"For the first time, we know what brands of alcoholic beverages underage youth in the U.S. are drinking," study author David Jernigan, Ph.D., director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins, said in a release. "Importantly, this report paves the way for subsequent studies to explore the association between exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing efforts and drinking behavior in young people."

Source: New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/teen-drinkers-reach-bud-light-smirnoff-study-article-1.1261266

Most Mobile Apps for Kids Secretly Collect and Share Information

A study from the Federal Trade Commission has found that most mobile apps for kids are secretly collecting information from children including device IDs, phone numbers, locations, and other private information without their parents' knowledge or consent.

Nearly 60% of the mobile apps the FTC reviewed from the Google Play and Apple App stores transmitted the device ID. They also often shared that ID with an advertising network, analytics company or another third party. Of those 235 mobile apps, 14 also transmitted the location of the device and the phone number, the FTC found.

More than half of the apps also contained interactive features such as in-app purchases and advertising that were not disclosed to parents.

Yet only 20% of the apps disclosed any information about their privacy practices.

"While we think most companies have the best intentions when it comes protecting kids’ privacy, we haven’t seen any progress when it comes to making sure parents have the information they need to make informed choices about apps for their kids. In fact, our study shows that kids' apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a written statement. "All of the companies in the mobile app space, especially the gatekeepers of the app stores, need to do a better job."

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ftc-most-mobile-kids-apps-secretly-collect-and-share-information-20121207,0,1679873.story

U.S. Consumers Watched 38 Billion Web Videos in August

The most recent comScore data reports that an all-time high of 188 million U.S. consumers watched an estimated 38 billion Web videos in August.

Americans viewed 9.5 billion video ads last month, with each of the top four video ad properties delivering more than 1 billion ads each. Overall, video ads reached 54% of the total U.S. population an average of 58 times during the month.

Also worth noting, comScore found that the duration of the average online content video was 6.7 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

Video ads also accounted for 20% of all videos viewed last month, and 1.4% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Source: MediaPost
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/183467/august-us-consumers-watched-nearly-38-billion-w.html?edition=51449

Black Friday Backlash as Stores Add to Thanksgiving Hours

As stores up the ante with earlier holiday hours that creep into Thanksgiving night, Black Friday is turning into Black Thursday, and some shoppers and employees aren't happy about it.

Toys R Us said Monday that it will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, an hour earlier than last year and the earliest of any retailer so far this year. Walmart will open at 10 p.m., two hours ahead of last year's midnight opening. Other stores, including Target, Macy's, Best Buy and Kohl's, will open at midnight.

Anthony Hardwick, a cart attendant at a Target in Omaha, started a campaign to protest the decision to open at midnight, four hours earlier than last year. His petition, on Change.org, calls for Target to push its opening to 5 a.m. Friday. The petition had 62,000 signatures as of late Monday.

"With the midnight open, you're going to cut into a lot of people's family time because you have to rest up if you're going to be working overnight," says Hardwick, 29. He says he'll be in bed by 2 or 3 p.m on Thanksgiving.

ConsumerSearch.com found in a recent survey of 1,003 people that 87% felt retailers should stay closed on Thanksgiving. "There's definitely a family spirit around Thanksgiving that people don't really want to see adulterated," says Christine Frietchen, editor-in-chief of the site.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story/2011-11-14/black-friday-backlash/51205118/1

YouTube Beats out Facebook as Top Youth Social Media Brand

A new Harris poll says that YouTube is the top social media brand among America's youth.

The video site beat Facebook as Social Media Brand of the Year in the 13- to 24-year-old age range, according to the 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study.

In terms of YouTube’s popularity, other studies have shown that more than 2 billion videos are played every day on the vide-sharing site and that YouTube mobile receives more than 100 million views daily.

Source: Barking Robot
http://www.debaird.net/blendededunet/2011/10/trend-watch-youtube-beats-out-facebook-as-top-youth-social-media-brand.html

One-Third of Teens Plan to Buy an iPhone Soon

Teenagers are fickle, but one thing never seems to change. They love Apple products.

More than one-third plan on buying an iPhone in the next six months, and 20% are planning to buy a tablet -- which probably means iPad.

Among MP3 players and online music services, the iPod and iTunes are the only ones that matter.

That's according to Piper Jaffray's latest bi-annual survey of high school students, now in its 21st year.

This time, the firm asked 4,500 kids about their interest in Apple products and digital music.
Here are some of the highlights:

• 17% already own an iPhone, and 37% plan on buying one in the next 6 months.
• 22% either own a tablet or have one in their house, and 20% of them plan to buy one in the next 6 months.
• Only 80% now own an MP3 player -- down from 90% last fall. More teens are listening to music on their cell phone (53% versus 50% last fall), so that may account for some of the drop. Or maybe MP3 players are no longer cool.
• Of the teens who own MP3 players, 86% of them have an iPod.
• Of the teens who download music, iTunes has 95% market share.

Source: Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-your-teen-really-wants-for-her-birthday-apple-2011-4

Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising in Magazines has Declined

A recent study indicates that youth exposure to alcohol advertising in national magazines has declined during the period from 2001 - 2008.

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently released their study on youth exposure to alcohol advertising in national magazines. Key findings of the study:

• From 2001 to 2008, youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines fell by 48 percent.  Adult (age 21 and above) exposure declined by 29 percent and young adult (ages 21 to 34) dropped by 31 percent.

• Alcohol advertising placed in publications with under 21 audiences greater than 30 percent fell to almost nothing by 2008.

• Continued declines in youth overexposure will depend on the actions of a small number of brands:  In 2008, 16 brands (5 percent of the total 325 advertising in magazines) accounted for 50 percent of youth exposure in magazines with youth compositions above 15 percent, and 40 brands (13 percent) were responsible for 80 percent of youth exposure in these magazines.

Source: Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth
http://www.camy.org/research/Youth_Exposure_to_Alcohol_Advertising_in_National_Magazines_2001-2008/index.html

Retailers Seeing Slow Start to Back-to-School Shopping

The crucial back-to-school season got off to a slow start, as retailers hoping for brisk sales of apparel, backpacks and school supplies instead saw tepid business and continued consumer frugality last month.

Major chain stores reported that sales rose a modest 2.9 percent in July compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters' tally of 28 retailers. That was lower than the 3.1 percent increase analysts had predicted and marked the fourth straight month that results either missed or came in at the low end of expectations, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers.

In a poor sign for the back-to-school season, teen retailers were the biggest drag on the retail industry last month, with Hot Topic Inc. posting a 9 percent sales decline, Wet Seal Inc. reporting a 4.3 percent drop and American Eagle Outfitters Inc. seeing flat sales.

Even Aeropostale Inc., a relative bright spot in the weak teen sector in recent months thanks to lower prices than many of its competitors, struggled in July: The chain posted a 1 percent increase, worse than the 7.1 percent rise that analysts had expected.

All told, 61 percent of retailers missed expectations, according to Thomson Reuters.

Source: Chicago Tribune
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-05/business/sc-biz-0806-retail-sales-20100805_1_action-sports-retailer-zumiez-effect-of-store-openings-teen-retailers

Study Finds Link Between Catchy Ads and Whether Teens Smoke

Years ago, a popular cigarette advertising campaign proudly proclaimed to women, "You've come a long way, baby!"

But a recent study of teens shows the war on cigarette advertising that targets teens, especially teenage girls, might still have a ways to go.

Although the 1998 settlement agreement between big tobacco and state governments restricted advertising to children and teens, nearly half of teenage girls participating in the study could name their favorite cigarette ad. What's more, the study found that teenagers who could name a favorite cigarette ad were 50 percent more likely to have smoked during the five-year study period.

One ad campaign in particular stood out in the minds of teen girls and increased their awareness of cigarette advertising, the study found. The product was Camel No. 9 cigarettes, and the ads featured a pink camel and a sub-brand of cigarettes called Stiletto. In addition to the very feminine ads placed in such magazines as Glamour and Vogue, the campaign also featured promotional giveaways, including flavored lip balm, purses and cell phone jewelry.

R.J. Reynolds, which makes Camel No. 9, said that the product and the advertisements were not designed to attract teenagers. "Camel No. 9 was developed in response to female adult smokers, both of Camel and competitive brands, who were asking for a product that better reflected their taste preferences and style," according to a prepared statement issued by the tobacco company.

"When Camel No. 9 was launched in 2007, all magazine advertisements for it appeared in publications whose readership was at least 85 percent age 18 or older," the statement continued. "More importantly, R.J. Reynolds has not run any print advertising for cigarettes, including Camel No. 9, for more than two years, and there has been no in-store advertising for Camel No. 9 since 2008."

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/636963.html