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What your kids
think is cool
by
Joshua Covington
Virginia
Business
March 2003
“Wussup? Yo, I’m just chillin’ in this
tight crib.” Know what this means? If you’re
a Virginia teenager you do, at least according to the
Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation.
Before
launching its anti-smoking “Y” campaign, the
foundation scoured area malls and conducted telephone
and online interviews to gather data. They wanted to
know what makes teens tick and how they talk. Believability
is crucial for their $27 million, three-year marketing
effort to reduce and prevent the use of tobacco products
among Virginia’s youth. Funds came from a multi-billion-dollar
settlement with four cigarette makers.
So,
what did the researchers learn? That the favorite teen
slang word is “tight”, that bands such as
Blink 182 and Linkin Park are in and that teens and
tweens spend hours on the Internet listening to music
and chatting with friends in abbreviated word forms.
A look at media habits — they like radio and spend
an average of five hours on weekdays watching television
— helped the foundation come up with its “Can
anybody tell us Y smoking isn’t stupid?” campaign.
“The research helped us find a tagline that would
resonate with youth,” says Peter J. Sengenberger,
the foundation’s public relations coordinator.
The
pre-campaign research cost $717,000, but seems to have
been worth the effort. Sengenberger says that awareness
among Virginia teens of the campaign was at 58 percent
after only six months. The hope is that teen behavior
will change and smoking levels will drop by the end
of the campaign, funded with monies from Virginia’s
tobacco settlement. One trend turned up by the research
should come as comforting news to parents: it’s
cool to be smart. “Intelligence is in. … Seventy-three
percent of Virginia teens describe themselves as smart,”
says Sengenberger. Hopefully, smart enough not to start
smoking.
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