At a national cheerleading competition last month, girls wearing short skirts and purple eye glitter competed for points at the Anaheim Convention Center. But the real contest was going on in the beauty lounge.
The prize: the loyal buying habits of brand-obsessed teens.
At a vanity table in a corner of the convention center, Jessica Lopez, a 14-year-old from West Covina, learned how to make her tresses stand up on end with Herbal Essences hair spray. A stylist sprayed her hair, teased it with a comb and spritzed it again. Jessica walked away with a can of the spray -- and an armful of CoverGirl mascara, Secret deodorant, Skintimate shaving cream and Bic Soleil razors.
"My whole bathroom is full of stuff they give us," said the freshman on the Rock Star Athletics cheerleading team.
That's the idea. Struggling to get their message to teens, companies are finding new ways to reach them.
"Forces are making it very difficult for advertisers to connect with young people," said Samantha Skey, executive vice president of strategic marketing at Alloy Media & Marketing, a youth marketing agency. "So advertisers are going into schools, forging new platforms for youth connection."
To promote its in-house Epic Thread line of clothes, department store giant Macy's Inc. sent templates of T-shirts to elementary schools encouraging students to design shirts and enter their designs in a contest. Macy's selected a winner from 12,000 entries and will sell the T-shirt in 25 stores nationwide in May.
Old Spice sent to 5,000 high school football teams 100 samples of Red Zone brand body wash and deodorant as well as Old Spice body spray as part of its National Red Zone Player of the Year program, in which Old Spice encourages football coaches to nominate players. Those selected "player of the year" will appear in a full-page Old Spice ad in USA Today. "It's a perfect fit," said Jay Gooch, external relations manager for Old Spice. "It's a time in their lives when they're making choices about what they want to use."
Companies are smart to target cheerleaders, said Marlene Cota, vice president of corporate alliances at Varsity Brands Inc., the Memphis, Tenn., company that ran the competition in Anaheim, because they are often the girls others look up to.
