Capturing the teenagers' dollars

By IRENE CHAPPLE

A self-described "dream team" of marketers has formed a consultancy specialising in the elusive teenage market.

18 Ltd - not yet open, but with three clients already on its books - is nzgirl.co.nz entrepreneur Jenene Crossan's latest startup.

The company will use a research tracker created by Kudos Organisational Dynamics' Duncan Stuart and pool data from nzgirl.co.nz's database, with 12,000 users, and youth website www.studentz.co.nz, which is run by Spencer Willis and has 3000 users.

Crossan, Stuart, Willis, AUT lecturer David Harris and Frucor Beverages' Trevor Newman will share ownership of the company which, they say, will provide insight on the future of teen-buying behaviour.

The venture is a logical step for Crossan, 24, who began online magazine nzgirl.co.nz in 1999, and is in demand as a speaker and adviser on the fluid concept of youth culture.

The rapid-fire Crossan, who leans across a cafe table while enthusiastically describing the new venture, is a natural cover girl for 18 Ltd.

Her fairy-tale rise as a business success has been extensively documented: The straight A student, bored, sick with glandular fever and itching to enter the business world, left school at 16, popped through various web/marketing/computer jobs then struck out on her own.

Not knowing how to run a business, but armed with research and the gut feeling that young women needed more than the magazine industry was providing, Crossan set up nzgirl.co.nz for 15 to 29-year-olds.

The site, which Crossan says is unique in Australasia, was making a profit within the first year - success she attributes partly to its ability to rapidly respond to its audience.

Three years later, nzgirl.co.nz employs four people full time, has 60 contributors, and has logged up to 3300 visitors a day.

Crossan will not talk about how much money the site makes.

But she says sales income grew 50 per cent over the past year and the profit margin sits at 35 to 40 per cent.

Now holding just 30 per cent of the company, Crossan has reduced her day-to-day involvement.

"I'm a person who needs new challenges, I'm an ideas person ... I'm driven by new things and challenges," she says.

Crossan's three years' work with the teen market through nzgirl.co.nz convinced her the market's potential was under utitilised.

Stuart, who created the predictive tracking measure Cool Tracker, and specialises in researching the youth market, agrees. He says it has been growing consistently as a consequence of the changes in society over the past couple of decades.

The increasing wealth of young people is partly due to the fewer children per family - leading to increased pocket money, he says.

Parents are busier than in previous generations, and compensate for the lack of time they can devote to their children by spending more money and seeking instant entertainment.

Youth are also increasingly savvy, and participating in their parents' spending decisions, Stuart says.

He cites United States' research which indicates the spending of children aged four to 12 is doubling their spend every 10 years.

But while young people are increasingly affluent, capturing their dollars has always been a real challenge for the business world.

"Young people have their radar on full," says Stuart. "They are quick to assess whether a brand is authentic or bogus, try-hard or cool, delivers on promises or fails deliver, offers originality or is merely copy-cat."

The market can be loyal to brands, but only if "they remain authentic, relevant and deliver on their promise," he says.

Crossan, already diaried to conduct focus groups for 18 Ltd next week, says the fast turnover of information will be of value to clients.

Because the youth market changes quickly, she says, new trends must be acted on before "they go off the boil."

18 Ltd, says Crossan, will "be as predictive as possible. [Our research] is every day ... we can turn it around within the space of a week or two."