Advertising's sneak: advertisers are going to new lengths to hook you--burying their messages in your games, on Web sites, even in your friends at school. (National)(Cover Story).

Sometimes ads aimed at teens actually look like ads. When Britney Spears shakes her booty on TV while drinking Pepsi, the message is clear: To be sexy, drink Pepsi. Other times the ads don't look like ads at all. You think you're playing a road-race game on the MSN Gaming Zone Web site, but look again: The car you're driving is a Dodge. The game is an ad.

Some advertisers go even further. Companies have begun paying carefully selected, trendsetter teens to wear clothing from their lines. And one New York marketing firm set up fake Web sites with deliberately lax security that allowed hackers to think they had broken into unedited scenes from upcoming movies. The result: The hackers sent the footage to dozens or even hundreds of friends, becoming an advertising vehicle for the movies without knowing it.

Advertisers are giddy about teens. The reason is simple: Teens are where the money is. American teens, defined by marketers as ages 12 through 19, number nearly 32 million--and teen spending hit $172 billion last year, says Teen Research Unlimited, a market research company. In an average week, 76 percent of teens go to the mall, usually spending more than four hours there.

AN INCREDIBLY HOT MARKET

American teens are the most ad-soaked generation in history. A typical teen is exposed to 20,000 ads per year on television alone. Some media experts fear the barrage of ads could turn today's teenagers into Generation Buy, defining themselves by what they own and wear, rather than who they are.

"Teens are an incredibly hot market," says Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education, a Washington-based media-awareness group. "And in a practical way, it creates so many opportunities for teens to be exploited. What happens--and this is what the marketers want--is that you get absorbed into this consumer culture where the difference between you and the brand becomes blurred."

But advertisers face a real problem getting the attention of teens amid a whirlwind of ads. The best ad must be clever, manipulative, or both. To promote its new Air Presto line of sneakers, Nike exhibited the sneakers at a trendy New York City art gallery for what it called "a celebration of form, function, and color." Next came ads on MTV, Fox, and UPN--all popular teen channels--and Internet ads on teen-favored sites like WWF, GameProWorld, ChickClick, and Ifuse. The colorful $85 shoes, with fanciful names like Unholy Cumulus and Brutal Honey, took off. Within months, 2 million pairs were sold.

Advertisers also like to play on teen desires to be in the know and have the latest exclusive gear. When Heelys, the sneakers that can roll like skates, were first introduced, the company made sure they were hard to find by releasing just a few at a time to stores. Only after a teen feeding frenzy began did the company pack the stores with the product. Result: big sales.

And then there's the marketing version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: the stampede of advertisers to sign pop music stars to pitch products. The trend has gotten so out of control that when OutKast won this year's Grammy for Best Rap Album, group members picked up their statuettes, thanked the Lord for their victory, and announced a new clothing line. Destiny's Child actually made a CD, love: destiny, specifically for an advertising campaign for the Target discount chain.

To many teens, the heady appeal of associating themselves with pop royalty is irresistible. "Teens are looking at ideals and the kind of person they want to be," says Jeff Arnett, an independent researcher affiliated with the University of Maryland. "There's this fantasy of being this superstar, the power and glamour and fame and' fortune. It's a powerful fantasy."

GUERRILLA TACTICS IN AD WARS

But celebrity endorsements pale beside the next wave of marketing merchandise to teens. One technique, known as guerrilla marketing, uses methods that ambush the potential customer--to "place your brand in the target's hands in unexpected places," as one company says. Another method, so-called underground marketing, presents ads cleverly concealed not to look like ads at all, so that most people don't realize they've been hit with an ad.

In a classic guerrilla-marketing move, Nintendo promoted its GameCube by dispatching teams of "human interactives" to the streets of a dozen cities across the nation. Team members were outfitted with portable flat-screen monitors attached to the front of their bodies and GameCubes "giving consumers an early chance to sample games on the spot," the company said.

A variation on the theme has become a major force in the video-game business. In Darkened Skye, due out from GameCube later this year, Skittles candy is used as a magical catalyst against the innumerable monsters.

But underground marketers go further to create "buzz," to get people talking about a product. "Get your target talking about your brand without even knowing they're talking about it ... now that's real buzz," says the Web site for Big Fat, the New York-based marketing firm that lured computer hackers to spread the word about upcoming movies. (Company officials refuse to say which movies.)

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

Big Fat's other underground-marketing specialty: hiring influential teens to wear certain clothing in their daily lives, which the company calls "real life product placement."

Such marketing takes advantage of a fact of teen life: At schools, malls, beaches, or wherever teens hang out, the making of a new style often depends as much on other teens as on celebrities. At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, freshman Sara Ackerman, 14, says a friend recently began wearing button-down-collar shirts, the kind favored by businessmen. "She bought a whole bunch," says Sara, "and now you see a lot of kids wearing them."

Sara's friend is what marketers call an influencer. Influencers set the style because they are savvy about products and just risk-taking enough to try new things without going over the edge. Advertisers spend millions every year trying to get a fix on what influential teens think is cool.

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors business practices, say some underground marketing techniques might be illegal. If someone is being paid to testify to the worth of a particular product, says Mary Engle, assistant director of advertising practices at the FTC, "you have to disclose that." But Engle will not comment on whether the new, under-the-radar marketing practices are being investigated.

Big Fat and other underground marketers don't apologize for their methods. "Kids hate bad advertising," says Jonathan Ressler, president of Big Fat. "People are up in arms about underground marketing, but marketing is everywhere. There's a brand name on the toilet seat."

Despite the rain of advertising, teens say they don't believe ads are to blame. "Advertisers have a right to do what they do," says Heather Brooks, 18, a recent graduate of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. But she calls her generation "extremely materialistic," and says: "You go to the mall and it's filled with teens, and they spend all day there shopping. If you don't have the latest item, you're not cool."

But materialistic or not, teens are among the smartest consumers on Earth. The flood of ads, says Michael Woods, vice president of Teen Research Unlimited, "means a sophistication on the part of teens. They're savvier consumers, and they're much more conscious of how advertisers are courting them. They can see right through it."

WHERE YOU GET
YOUR MONEY

Lots of places, but
mom and dad are
usually the first stop.
Here's the percentage
of teens who said they
got money from the
following sources:

                    FEMALE      MALE

PARENTS              62%         49%
GIFTS                44%         35%
PART-TIME JOB        32%         28%
FULL-TIME JOB         8%         13%

Note: Table made from bar graph.
AND WHERE IT GOES

Teens spend an average of
$92 a week, but what are
they spending it on? Here's
the percentage of teens who
bought the following items in
the last year:

                         FEMALE        MALE

SUNGLASSES                23.6%       12.5%
BACKPACK                  15.3%       13.5%
PERSONAL STEREO           14.7%       14.2%
CELL PHONE                13.9%       11.8%
CD BURNER                  9.6%       11.2%
USED CAR                   8.5%        8.3%
HOME VIDEO-GAME
SYSTEM                     6%         11.5%

SOURCE FOR BOTH GRAPHS: TEEN RESEARCH UNLIMITED, FALL 2001 REPORT

Note: Table made from bar graph.

TEENS' FAVORITE TV COMMERCIALS:

NIKE: NBA Players' choreographed dribbling

PEPSI: Britney Spears

MOUNTAIN DEW: Guy rams a goat

7UP: Several Orlando Jones spots

BUDWEISER: Whassup; What are you doing; Frogs & Lizards

Advertising's Sneak Attack

FOCUS: Advertisers Use New and Subtle Strategies for Persuading Teens to Buy

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the new techniques advertising companies are using in their effort to persuade teenagers to spend money.

Discussion Questions:

* Is underground marketing a form of free speech or a deceptive practice?

* Have you ever bought something because of a great advertisement only to regret it later?

* About how many advertisements do you think you see in a day?

* Have you or your friends ever been the targets of guerrilla advertising, such as the giveaway of a particular brand of candy or soft drink at a sporting event, community celebration, or the like?

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Critical Thinking: Some experts fear today's teens may turn into "Generation Buy"--people who define themselves by what they own and wear rather than who they are. Is this a fair or unfair evaluation?

Ask students this question: Have they ever worn clothing displaying the brand name of a product or popular designer? What is the purpose of displaying brand names or designers' names on clothing? Does it identify the wearer as somehow "cool"? Is that what media expert Kathryn Montgomery means when she says "the difference between you and the brand becomes blurred"? Ad Analysis: Assign students to examine the ads in their favorite teen-oriented magazines. Have them bring three or more ads to class and analyze them. First, categorize the ads by the types of products or services they promote. Do the ads promise to enhance teens' quality of life in some fashion? What, exactly, do they promise? Is the product supposed to make the teen feel or look better? Is there a subtle implication that if one uses the product(s), he or she will be more popular? Are teens in the ads shown in a pleasant situation surrounded by friends? How many ads feature celebrities?

Finally, ask students to brainstorm their own ad-awareness plan: a brief list of warning signs they should look for when viewing ads. Here are a few suggestions for the list: * Is the ad's promise realistic? * Does the ad go beyond a description of the product to imply users will be happier? * What is the relevance of a celebrity endorsement?

Use with NATIONAL, pages 8-12. Fill In The Blank

1. -- bombards typical teens with about 20,000 ads a year.

2. What marketers really love to see is a blurring between teen customers and -- names of products.

3. Research finds that 76 percent of teens go to these shopping locales each week. What locales? --

4. --, a major manufacturer of --, introduced its new line by displaying their wares in, of all places, an art gallery.

5. Marketers often have pop-music stars advertise their products because, they say, such ads appeal to teens' fantasy of being --.

6. In the sneaky tricks department, marketers sometimes employ what is called -- marketing, so named because, like soldiers who engage in secretive, irregular warfare, this marketing ambushes potential customers who are unaware of its presence.

7. The Federal -- Commission, an agency that monitors business practices, says that some of the techniques used by underground marketers may be illegal.

ANSWERS

1. TV. 2. brand. 3. malls. 4. Nike/sneakers. 5. superstars or pop stars. 6. guerrilla. 7. Trade.