After lunch at her school in Tallahassee, Florida, 16-year-old Jenny Lieb hands out sticks of Big Red gum to her friends. Nothing unusual here, except that Jenny is taking notes on her friends' reactions to the gum.
Jenny is an agent for a marketing firm called BzzAgent. This company and others recruit young people to help spread excitement about products: music, movies, soft drinks, cell phones and more. The phenomenon is called peer-to-peer marketing.
Agents receive free products to share with their friends. In return, they fill out surveys and record their friends' reactions.
While BzzAgent's nearly 100,000 agents range in age from 16 to 89, other companies, including Alloy, Tremor and the Girls Intelligence Agency, recruit much younger agents.
Why are marketers eager to sign up kids like Jenny? Money! Kids ages 12 through 19 spent $169 billion in 2004, says Michael Wood, the vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited.
"Most of my friends and I have never felt that commercials drew us in," Jenny says. "But with (peer-to-peer), you're actually seeing the product and trying it out on the spot."
The trend has critics. "You won't know whether your friends hang out with you because they like you or because it's their job," says Marilyn Cohen, the director of Teen Futures Media Network.
Some kids keep their agent jobs secret, but Jenny has told her family and friends about her work. Andy Sernowitz, the CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, says that all marketing firms should tell their agents to do the same.
Should kids market products to their friends?
YES! GIA is a research-and-marketing firm that helps companies make better products for girls. We talk to girls weekly through our website and help the girls host their own monthly slumber parties. Our agents tell us exactly how they feel about a new product. If they hate it, they tell all of their friends just that. If they like it, however, they share that with their friends. Word-of-mouth advertising has been around forever. It is essential today because there are so many media-from television to the Internet-competing for kids' attention. If kids like something, you win. If they don't, you lose. They are holding all of the cards.
- Laura Groppe is the CEO of the Girls Intelligence Agency (GIA).
No! When you tell a friend about a product or a movie you like, that's great. But when an adult asks you to promote a product, that's wrong. How would you feel if you took a friend's recommendation to buy something and only later found out that she or he had been given the product free to convince you? Kids who work for marketing firms often don't explain who they are working for. Would you want your friends to hide that information from you? Kids think getting free products is cool, but these companies act supernice so they can get you to do what they want. When they don't need you anymore, they drop you like a hot potato.
- Juliet Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College and the author of Born to Buy.