Stores teem with products for 'tweens'

By Cliff Peale
Cincinnati Enquirer

For those thinking there is no reason to market to shoppers younger than 13, there are 10 billion reasons to change your mind.

That's how many dollars children ages 8 to 12 — called "tweens" in marketing parlance — spend every year. They influence another $250 billion in purchases, making them one of the new target markets for companies throughout the country.

That has led to a blizzard of new products, from H.J. Heinz Co.'s green ketchup, introduced two years ago, to Foam Blaster from Johnson & Johnson, a hand soap that squirts out like shaving cream.

Other companies are getting into the trend. Perfetti Van Melle USA, maker of Airheads candy bars, has teamed with Cap'n Crunch cereals to feature balloon-shaped berries. And Chiquita Brands International Inc. has promoted a www.chiquitakids.com Internet site.

The targets: kids and the mothers who take them shopping.

"We talk about a four-eyed, four-legged consumer, mom plus kid," said Dave Siegel, president of Cincinnati marketing firm WonderGroup, which specializes in marketing to kids. He said the Heinz green ketchup, which WonderGroup helped develop two years ago, "really opened up the eyes of a lot of CEOs: 'Holy cow, we should be doing kids' stuff, too.' "

The numbers are based on basic kid behavior. For example, parents cited price as the No. 1 factor when buying food for children, but "child request" was a close second at 57 percent, according to WonderGroup.

"Tweens told us that they trained their moms to know what to buy for them," the company's partners said.

The baby boomer generation has many companies thinking about products that would appeal to an aging audience. But because so many companies have barely thought about marketing specifically to younger children, the agency should keep growing, said WonderGroup chairman Tim Coffey.