Not that it's easy to connect with tweens.
HP came up with 44 ideas on how technology could be used to enhance how children could play -- for instance, a high-tech skateboard of the future. The products were research exercises not necessarily designed to go to market, and the program was dropped this year, although HP says it's still interested in the tweens market.
AOL, the most popular Internet service provider, developed its online service for kids, KOL,, which is full of content aimed at keeping children happy and their eyeballs logged on. Nintendo and phone maker Motorola Inc. are among KOL's sponsors. Their ads are more interactive and engaging than 30-second TV spots and can hold users' attention for several minutes at a time as youngsters view preview clips and sign up for news and games, all accompanied by ads.
Companies are barred from collecting e-mail addresses and other personal information from children younger than 13, so keeping kids engrossed enough to keep watching ads is crucial.
In December and January, KOL will stream live broadcasts from the Mission nightclub in Miami, which sponsors expect to attract teens as well as their younger siblings.
"Advertisers are totally waking up to the realization that it's far more valuable to put money into the online, tactile experience than to put all their money into TV," Bird said.
Instead of creating products for children as AOL did, Sony extended its Walkman music player to the tween market with the Walkman Bean, a jellybean-shaped digital music player in splashy colors.
"We didn't de-feature it to make it appealing to these kids; we put a fun shape to it," said Malcolm, the Sony senior marketing manager. "We focus on what's hip and cool."
One marketing campaign Sony devised for the Walkman Bean was a tie-in with the MTV show "My Super Sweet 16," in which teens turning 16 get to throw a dream birthday party with a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars. On an upcoming episode, one winner recorded the party invitation on Walkman Beans that were sent to his guests -- who then could keep the device.
And that could open up doors to more customers
"Because tweens are so attuned to new technology, they're actually a gateway into the family," said Matthew Glass, chief executive of Grand Central Marketing, an event-promotion company in New York that frequently works with preteens. "These kids network, and from a viral perspective, if you get on their radar, they're talking about it all the time: 'I gotta have this, I gotta have that.' "
And the list of what they "gotta" have often grows with each purchase.
Phoebe Maddox got an iPod nano for her 14th birthday. But her family, which lives in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., has an aging laptop computer that can't play CDs. So after spending $250 on the iPod, her parents had to shell out an additional $100 for an external CD drive so that Phoebe could use the device.
