By Geoff Dennis

Peering through the keyhole, you can’t make out much more than a telephone. As your eye catches it, it starts to ring. A young, peppy female voice picks up. “Hey, this is Lu Lu.You made it. Cool.”

The view from the keyhole enlarges and suddenly you’re inside the bedroom of the average teenage girl.

A red and orange snowboard rests against a bright, peach-coloured wall festooned with pop star posters.

High-heeled boots and sneakers are scattered about the striped floor. A lava lamp bubbles away. And of course, Lu Lu has a computer.There are funky hanging lights, a bean bag chair and a beige fun-fur rug. A snoring dog sleeps on the polka-dotted bedspread, while a goldfish’s eyes follow the movements of your cursor as it scans Lu Lu’s room.

You can open and close the drawers of the night table beside the bean bag chair and a package of Noxzema will pop out. In the lower drawer, there’s a tube of Crest toothpaste. Beneath the bed is a package of Tampax. Hanging from the doorknob, below the keyhole, is Lu Lu’s purse containing Cover Girl makeup.

Clicking on any of the products takes you to a description page where a brief write-up explains that the Cover Girl Collection, for example, is “everything you need for a naturally beautiful, finished look.” But curiously, that’s all there is.

There’s no “Buy now”button or pop-up advertisement—only a link to the Cover Girl site. It’s just information.

Lu Lu is a fictitious teen designed by Toronto’s Grey Interactive for Procter & Gamble. Lu Lu won’t appear on TV or radio; she’s exclusively a cyber-chick and Lulusroom.ca is a Web community for Canadian teenage girls. It’s a place where they can chat or enter contests for free stuff (like concert tickets) but, most importantly, the site is designed to generate brand loyalty.

Market sense

“We asked ourselves, ‘What do teenage girls do?’” said Rob Sandler, a co-managing director at Grey who worked on the site.

“Well, they shop, of course, but most of the time they hang out in their rooms and talk to their friends or surf.We wanted to replicate

that online, to make a place where they feel comfortable to express themselves. The product marketing is intertwined, but there’s no direct selling.”

Sites such as Lu Lu’s Room are the next generation of ecommerce, a sector that is geared toward young people. There are few sites like it and, for the most part, advertisers and companies have been slow to engage youngsters online. Many companies seem content to maintain the status quo, and this oversight could cost them millions in lost revenue, according to Forrester Research.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm has been studying a demographic it identifies as “Wired Youth.”They are 13 to 22 years old, they’re a Web-savvy group and they’ve got disposable cash. Forrester predicts that wired youth in Canada will spend a whopping US$830 million in 2002, and by 2006 spending will swell to US$1.8 billion.

“Wired youth are consumer seedlings, they’re in the minor leagues of capitalism,” said Christopher M. Kelley, Forrester’s retail analyst. “They are sadly overlooked.

Companies must make a more concerted effort to get these kids buying—because they want to.”

Wired youth are drastically different than any previous youth demographic. They’re engaged by the Web. To them, the Internet and e-commerce aren’t new technologies—they’ve been there almost all the time. The challenge now is to direct their spending.

According to Forrester, 65 per cent of wired youth research and purchase music online. The clothing category comes a close second with 57 per cent, while books come in third at 52 per cent. And it doesn’t stop there. Forrester said that simply flashing a Web site address in an advertisement will entice kids to visit it.

“Companies have to look beyond the face value of this demographic,”Kelley said. “Getting them now means they will grow up with you, which in turn, increases the biggest prize of all: brand loyalty. If a company, for example, waits until kids are 20, their tastes and loyalties would already be established elsewhere. By then it would be too late.”

Young obstacles

Even if wired youth were fully addressed online, there’s still one major obstacle: how will they pay for their products?

Right now, a credit card is still the preferred method of online payment and teens can’t get one until they turn either 16 or 18. So what if a 14-year-old wanted to buy some Cover Girl makeup online because Lu Lu’s Room turned her onto it? Well, she’s out of luck.

A solution for some is CertaPay’s e-mail chequing platform.

In an alliance with Canadian banks like TD Canada Trust and ScotiaBank, almost four million Canadians will soon be able to send money via e-mail. All that’s required is a Web-connected bank account, a password and an e-mail address. However, the same age restrictions apply, so that Cover Girl makeup will still have to be bought inperson.

Problems like this greatly frustrate Max Valiquette, a youth consumer advocate and president of Youthography, a Toronto-based youth marketing consulting company.

“The single greatest hurdle is definitely the payment platform.What if a teen was on eBay and wanted to join an auction for a Mario Lemieux rookie card? Now, there’s really no way to do so unless you’re older and have a credit card,” he said. And he doubts the impact of person-toperson e-mail chequing will be very substantial to teens. “The kids aren’t getting enough credit.

They’re looking for ways right now to spend their money online, but their options are so limited that it’s almost pointless.”

Face time

So while actual online purchases remain out of reach, the Web can still be the perfect vehicle for cementing brand awareness. In other words, young people may not be able to buy online but they can walk into a store and grab something they saw on the Web the day before.

Kelley said the best way to snag wired youth is through advertising in places they frequent. Great places to start include local alternative magazines such as Toronto’s Eye or Now, college campuses, television stations like MuchMusic or Web sites such as AOL or Sympatico.

It all begins with awareness. Teenage girls, for example, can discover Lu Lu’s Room online at AOL or through popular instant messaging services like ICQ or AOL Instant Messenger.

Multinationals such as Procter & Gamble or Sony enjoy a brand awareness that makes them well suited to reach wired youth through large cross-promotional campaigns.

Sony, for example, is the most recognized brand within that demographic.

For Sony, the Web is only one channel to get kids to spend their cash. Recently, Sony Electronics (a division of the Sony brand that sells products like Playstation) relaunched its portable Minidisc recorder with targeted ads on TV, radio and in print. But the campaign didn’t use the Web, and while sales increased in the stores, e-commerce purchases for Minidiscs were virtually non-existent.

“Sony markets our products to a wide range of demographics.

Our Web homepage can’t be just for 14 year olds,” said John McCarter, general manager of advertising for Sony Electronics. “The ’net hasn’t replaced the traditional channels, rather, it complements them. For a company like us, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket.”

W e b y o u t h

CertaPay http://www.certapay.com
Forrester Research http://www.forrester.com
Grey Worldwide http://www.grey.net
Lu Lu’s Room http://www.lulusroom.ca
Procter & Gamble http://www.pg.com
Roots http://www.roots.ca
Sony Electronics http://www.sony.ca
Sony Playstation http://www.playstation.com
Youthography http://www.youthography.com