For teenage girls, this is an age of intimate communications: What would you tell your sister, and how? Marketers must learn the answer to this question if they want to reach this increasingly important demographic.
That’s why Euro RSCG Worldwide PR launched The Sisterhood in spring 2010. This initiative offers PR and other marketing tools to help brands sell to and influence teenagers, or at least join the trialogue—multi-way exchanges of ideas and opinions among consumers and brands, which matter now more than ever—as authentic players. In addition, our dedicated blog is integral piece of our Sisterhood program.
We are committed to generating insights about and strategies to influence the brand and media preferences of teenage girls, and to join their conversations in a way that’s not intrusive. We understand the importance of listening and learning, then talking and listening some more.
“Why do girls try so hard every morning to get dressed in the perfect outfit and look good? You could just be yourself and not worry about what everyone thinks and still have those true friends who actually care about your interests, feelings and personality. But even then, teenage girls will keep going through all this trouble, because they want to make a statement. They do these things because there is a feeling when you look in the mirror and know you look amazing.”
—Isabelle D., age 17
Because these girls have never known a world without Internet communications, social media is a key driver. The scope, however, is wider, taking in the importance of social life, new experiences, mass media, parents, pop culture and everything else that drives this audience to sample what’s new.
Seventy-five percent of teen girls report being in “constant contact” with friends through texts, Facebook, iChat, AIM or other social media services.
Marian Salzman, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s president, North America, and co-leader of The Sisterhood, knows teenage girls. She has worked with them and helped marketers reach them for more than 20 years. In the early 1990s, she worked with BKG Youth, which created a viewer feedback system for the in-school TV network Channel One, and she cast the real kids (including Gwyneth Paltrow, then a freshman at UC Santa Barbara) in Esprit’s “What Would You Do to Change the World?” campaign. She organized focus groups at tweenager slumber parties for Levi’s and online for AOL. She created the National Teen Summit for Clearasil, co-authored the Greetings from High School and Kids Online book series, and was a creative consultant on Pepsi’s “It’s Like This” campaign, which ran on MTV.
In the early 2000s, as executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide, she led the Euro RSCG Project Fishing Experience, which used real people for innovations creation and launched the Xplorer panels that gave the agency access to global youth, who offered their insights into bigger social shifts. Both were done for clients including Reckitt and Cadbury. The Sisterhood will employ similar approaches, but moved into the PR space and given an e-twist.
“Why does it seem like when one thing goes wrong, the whole day becomes a disaster? All I want to do is go home, watch a good movie in my comfy pajamas, and eat chocolate chip cookies with a glass of milk. When I finally get home after such a tragic day, I get a text message from a cute guy I went to summer camp with saying he’d love to see me and catch up. Sometimes when everything seems to go wrong, the littlest messages from old friends (or crushes) make everything better.”
—Evelyn D., age 18
Karina Meckel is also one of The Sisterhood’s co-leaders. She is director of strategic planning for Euro RSCG Worldwide PR and worked with Marian on the Project Fishing Experience and the Xplorer panels in Amsterdam with 20 teens. Karina also conducted research with teens and teen experts that facilitated Euro RSCG’s Clearasil win in 2007. She has five years of experience as a brand strategist with Euro on key clients such as Nestlé, Charles Schwab and Reckitt Benckiser.
Today’s teens have the ability to see light where adults see shade, and an innate ability to put social media to work to shape their world. Teens are talking about you. So are you really listening? Are you able to help and be useful to them? There has never been a better time to listen to The Sisterhood.
What Is Sisterhood?
You know that image of teenage girls on the Internet 24/7, tweeting, IMing and Facebooking their way through every waking moment? Forget it. The average teen is online just 23 minutes a day. And the “so me” notion of social media, the one that says users broadcast their lives to the world? Lose that one, too. Teenage girls want to stay in constant contact with friends, but usually just one at a time. They’re way more likely to text or call a confidant than to post an announcement to everyone they know. Communication is one-to-one, and the watchword is intimacy.
“What is with the girls on Facebook who post inappropriate pictures of themselves for everyone to see? I have seen many pictures of teenage girls binge drinking, wearing revealing clothes and making sexual gestures, and they do this so that boys will comment on the photos. Who wants to see that? And aren’t they worried that their parents are gonna see this too?”
—Christine V., age 15
“Priding myself on the fact that I was the girl who hung out with the guys all my life, I never would have expected to be rounding off the first semester of my senior year in high school with the same seven girls that I have been best friends with since freshman year. I have always chosen to spend most of my time with boys, claiming that they are less dramatic, easygoing and more fun all around. But there is something I get from my girlfriends that I never got out of those boys from elementary school.”
—Tori S., age 19
Call it Sisterhood. Important things get said only to important people. That’s not to say teen communication is exclusionary. To the contrary; being part of a group of two or three sisters (biological or otherwise) lets everyone have her say and be heard. Individual identity is not lost, as it is in larger groups—it’s amped up.
Sixty-five percent of teen girls say that when their favorite brand or store has a sale, they want to share the information with their best friend or sister, and 57 percent say that when they find out about a new brand or trend, they tell a best friend or sister. About 80 percent use one-to-one communication (texting or phone calls).
Teenage girls have been shaped by social media. They’ve never experienced communication in an Internet-less world. Self-taught master-users of social technology, they know how to seamlessly weave social media into their lives. They include what they want and ignore or block what they don’t. When they go online, they know what they’re looking for—friendship, and a space to conduct their social relationships.
Almost 40 percent of teen girls sign up for e-mails about sales and promotions from favorite brands. Just 28 percent browse and subscribe to newsletters for similar info.
What Is The Sisterhood?
Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s youth-focused marketing practice taps into the powerful, intimate bond that teenage girls share with their sisters and best friends. Our teen marketing intelligence—a result of listening closely to teens and incorporating them into our process—allows us to generate real-time, real-world messaging. Our understanding of sisters and how they communicate helps influence the marketplace, and the zeitgeist.
“Our world is struggling with keeping our environment safe and secure. I feel that our country and the planet can be dealing with this issue more seriously by bringing awareness to the public of what can happen to our environment if we are not careful. I worry as a young adult about how in the future we are going to handle suffering in the world. Problems in the Sudan are not recognized as much as they should be. People should be aware of such terrible acts being done to people in that country.”
—Evelyn D., age 18
“I worry about what I am going to do when I grow up. So many of my friends already know what they want to be, but I have no clue! I love music, and I love to dance and sing, and my ultimate dream would be to perform on American Idol, but that is a few years away, and it is so competitive, so who knows! I am in drama and show choir, so I know that I would like to stay in the arts, maybe I’ll teach music and dance? I need to start speaking to guidance counselors and older girls who love the arts as much as I do.”
—Christine V., age 15
“I got my first phone in the 5th or 6th grade. I have Facebook and Google on my phone, so I don’t need to be on the computer all the time. And not a day goes by that I don’t send a text message. My dad is always telling me to stop. Last night he sent me a text that said, ‘Stop texting!’”
—Taryn M., age 16
Teen 101
The Sisterhood draws on proprietary research, conducted by independent research vendor MicroDialogue for Euro RSCG Worldwide PR in November 2009, that looked at the way American female consumers ages 13 to 18 spend, socialize and communicate in a world that is increasingly dominated by social and digital media.
Here’s some of what we learned when we went back to school with MicroDialogue:
- Customization and contests: Brands can bring teen girls into their stores by coupling contests and customization. The ability to modify and personalize goods is attractive to them. To do so as part of a team—with her best friend/sister—provides a social motivation for girls to get involved with brands and campaigns.
- Brand-and-price nexus: Teen girls buy when they find the correct nexus of brand, price and environment. A teen girl will not compromise on brand. With more time than money, however, she will wait until she finds her brand at her price. Maximizing sales means offering good brands at discount prices, presented in a way that refers to her microculture.
- Knowing who each teen girl is, what she prefers: Knowing teen girls is about knowing each teen girl. An accurate profile means the difference between marketing to her successfully and not. Her pop culture role models, favorite bands and shopping history are crucial. Social media provides opportunities for girls to compile this information for brands in exchange for access to special offers.
Fifty-nine percent of teen girls say maintaining a unique personal style is important to them—approximately double the number of girls who like to follow the same trends and adopt the same styles as their friends. Forty-three percent are influenced by celebrities, and just 26 percent by the “cool” girls at school.
The Benefits of Tapping Real Girls for Real Solutions
Teenage girls are the lifeblood of The Sisterhood concept, and they are intimately involved in its execution. They provide us with targeted intelligence to ensure we hit the bull’s-eye in terms of insights.
Shopping with her best friend or sister, a teen girl will spend 23 percent more than when shopping with two or more friends. Shopping with a boy, she will spend only 43 percent of what she spends with her close friend or sister.
We have more than 40 teen girls serving as national spokespeople, trusted advisers and marketplace analysts. Among them:
Evelyn D. is a 17-year-old at a private high school in Westchester County, N.Y. She worked on The Sisterhood in the Euro PR offices in spring 2010 for her senior-year project, along with her 16-year-old sister, Isabelle. They consider themselves best friends, share many friends (and clothes) and are very style-conscious yet also serious about the environment and the suffering in Darfur and the Sudan.
Tori S., is a 19-year-old college freshman who was in the top 10 percent of her high school graduating class. She’s a social butterfly who enjoys reading, playing Wii, eating In-N-Out and sushi, going to the beach, traveling, relaxing with friends and texting constantly.
Christine V., a 15-year-old sophomore at a public high school in Nassau County, N.Y., that has special emphasis on music and the arts. She has been dancing since age 2 and is currently involved in drama, show choir, tap, jazz and ballet. She performs in several dance and theater productions a year and is rarely seen without her iPod.
How We Work: A Basic Process of Collaboration with Real Girls
Real girls are involved at virtually every step along the way. They helped create our website, shared pop culture clues to link teen girls to brands and generated foundational materials about their generation and how and what they buy.
“I think that everyone wants to look like a supermodel, so when companies put their products on beautiful models, it makes people want to purchase them, to be as pretty as those women and girls are.”
—Isabelle D., age 16
Of course, they work with a team of seasoned PR pros, and a Euro RSCG Worldwide PR brand manager oversees each account. As with everything Euro PR does, senior management is involved in all accounts, and we collaborate with colleagues across the global Havas network (the parent company of Euro RSCG).
We draw on the social media expertise of Cake (a Havas company) and Plaid (Cake’s preferred affiliate). Newsengine, our media relations department, and the interns at Newsengine University serve as the news arm when appropriate.
“Every morning, I hear my alarm go off at 5:45, when it’s still dark out, and it is the worst feeling in the world. But I do this because my hair is very curly, and I need to flatiron it every day; otherwise I don’t feel pretty (even though my parents like it curly and tell me that I am crazy!). If I keep my hair curly I feel disgusting, and I feel like I will be ignored by all of the boys. I wish I had the courage to be happier with myself, but it’s not just me. None of my friends are happy with how they look. People with curly hair want it straight; people with straight hair want it curly; redheads want to be brunettes, and brunettes want to be blondes. And then there are these braces, UGH!!!”
—Christine V., age 15
I love music in every way, shape or form (except for “Screamo,” which is a genre of music that consists of pure screaming—I am just not that hard-core). YouTube allows me the opportunity to view many new artists my age, some that have made it big thanks to this massive social network. I love seeing artists progress and watching new ones appear.
—Morgan M., age 16
The Sisterhood uses Euro PR’s proprietary Route 360, our toolbox for immersing ourselves in all the places where people and media live now.
Our process includes:
- Teen culture landscape audit
- Sisterspeak immersion for girl brands to ascertain the language of influence creation around the brand concept, product, celebrities and so on
- Creation of programs by, for and about teens—their sisters
- A unique momentum-scoring process to examine impact and infiltration—is it becoming part of the Sisterhood landscape?
It also incorporates best practices from our existing clients. Across our network, we steward teen brands.
