Teen Marketing: Apple's the Master

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The Apple Genius Bars have become hotbeds for young people to fix their Macs, moon over the latest hardware—and each other.

At Manhattan's SoHo Genius Bar, "the men of the help desk have become a draw for New York's damsels in hard-drive distress," according to a 2005 New York Post story, "Geek Gods." Other brands teens love extend the aesthetic in their advertising to physical stores, too. Among them: American Apparel and Nike (NKE), with its Niketown stores.

3. Let fans and the media do your marketing. Wired's Kahney notes that whenever Apple began to get lots of media attention, it would scale back on marketing. He also observes that Apple never overloads ads with information. They keep marketing simple, letting the press and fans fill in the gaps. When individuals (and other brands, like Fuse TV) began to parody the iPod ads and the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads, this simply fueled word-of-mouth marketing for Apple. And organic word of mouth is always the best marketing. Teens are the most social of social creatures and value friends' opinions above any traditional advertising.

4. You don't have to be for teens to reach teens. In some ways, this is the biggest lesson brands can learn from Apple. Their products are for everyone. Apple's ads are not age-specific; the silhouettes show all different kinds of people. The spots also feature varied genres of music, even as they resonate with an MTV audience. It's the brand values of creativity, diversity, and individuality, combined with a line of well-designed products that deliver, that has converted this generation of teenagers into Mac addicts.

Most brands will never be able to fully replicate Apple's zeitgeist moment with the iPod and its continued success with teens and young adults. Some brands come close, however. On a smaller scale, Nike created a phenomenon with NIKEiD., a site where sneakerheads can design their own shoes and pay big bucks for the ability to do so. The site combines strong design with the capability for young people to infuse their own creativity and express themselves through their sneakers. It also attracts an insane amount of fan love from sneakerheads who profess their love on sneaker blogs and sneakerhead social networks.

Even if you can't create your own cult of Mac, you can learn a thing or two from Apple on how to reach the iPod generation.

Goodstein is the publisher of Ypulse.com, a Web site specializing in marketing to young people, and is the author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online. She covers teens and technology in an occasional column at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.