Marketers have coveted the teen/youth market for many years.  As teens begin to work more after school jobs, their level of discretionary income without parental control continues to increase.  Many industries have taken advantage of these trends, but what about telecom?  Before you answer, a couple of interesting statistics to consider:

•  Teens spend 200 days per year in the mall
•  Teens spend $175 billion per year in these malls
•  Most of this spending is in cash.

So the teen market looks a little more interesting. Now the question is, how to market to these customers?  Another interesting factoid is that although teenagers “browse” online, they “buy” at the mall.  If you think about this a bit, it makes obvious sense - for the most part, they don’t have access to credit cards.  So although the Internet can be a valuable marketing tool, it can’t be your only point of sale.

Now on to the telecom opportunity.  Initially you may think, how will telecom services fit in this market?  Phone lines and DSL are part of the parent’s monthly bill.  Pagers and cell phones may ultimately be used by teens, but are purchased by parents and there’s always a concern with the unknown bill amount at the end of the month.  We’ve seen press coverage discussing the approval of cell phones for use in schools by students for parents to be able to reach them.  Text messaging, ring tones and downloadable icons all add to the personalization of cell phone identities and the desire of teens to spend to have the latest “cool” features.

We’ve recently encountered a company who is creating the tools for phone operators to take this personalization to the next level and drive an ongoing revenue stream.  The company is Wildseed.  Wildseed is a software company with a grand marketing vision.  They are partnering with handset manufacturers to bring the operators a new twist on phones for the teen market. First, turn the phone upside down, keypad on top and screen on the bottom.  Sounds a little weird at first, but look at your hand with your phone in it and think about it - it’s actually a little more comfortable fit.  Then envision skins that wrap around your phone and bring a personal identity to it.  These skins are equipped with a chip that allows you to change the experience you have on a regular basis.