Dive Brief:
- Manufacturers may be able to harness the typical rebellious nature of teenagers to encourage making healthier eating choices as an act of defiance, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- Researchers provided groups of students with either a typical article about a healthy diet or a more cynical expose focused on questionable food company practices, such as making foods more addictive or labeling unhealthy foods with various health claims.
- Students the next day received their choice of snacks for a long-awaited celebration. Those who had read the expose were less likely to select junk foods in favor of fruit or baby carrots.
Dive Insight:
By flipping teenage rebellion on its head, adults — and food and beverage manufacturers — could motivate teenagers to adopt healthy dietary patterns in a way that younger generations respond to best. Younger consumers may tune out marketing messages geared at adults, so having a plan in place specifically for teenagers could improve the ROI of marketing campaigns for those brands.
Part of that message is the medium. Teenagers today do still watch TV, but they also are constantly connected to each other and brands via social media and messaging apps. For optimum impact, manufacturers can promote motivational cues centered around healthy choices as an act of rebellion using social and mobile platforms most readily accessible to today's teenagers.
Teenagers may not yet have the buying power of millennials, Gen X and baby boomers, but they are still a key target market for many brands and product categories. They are also the working class and parents of tomorrow, and the sooner brands can devise a strategy to foster brand loyalty, they could reap the benefits when today's teens start getting jobs and making their own purchase decisions.
Attracting kids and teenagers to a brand when they're young also tends to have staying power years or decades later. Companies have increasingly embraced nostalgia as a way to revitalize product sales in categories like soda and candy.