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Peer Pressure Marketing

Thessaly La Force on how to start trends.

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By Thessaly La Force

An informal Youth Radio poll revealed that peer pressure is the most effective form of marketing. No one knows better than other kids how to spread trends, and they have a thing or two to teach marketing professionals. Youth Radio’s Thessaly La Force lays down the “laws” of peer pressure, translating the world of tweens and teens for adults who want to know.

“The more people have it, the more you want it.”

“There’s definitely people that I really like their style in clothing, and I’ll try to emulate that.”

“I remember one time in like the seventh grade, I had the corn rows in the front and the back was down, and all the boys would laugh… but by the eighth grade, you see all these people running around with the same hair style (laughing).”

Everyone knows of Newton’s Laws of Physics. What about teenagers’ Laws of Peer Pressure? Understand these and you’re home free.

First: The Law of Cockiness. Trends start with kids who act like they create fashion by accident, without even trying.

13-year-old Haley Smart shows what a dose of confidence can do for your trend. He started wearing ties to school with torn button-down shirts. He wanted to rebel against adult style and prove punks can look nice too.

Haley Smartt: I went through my dad’s tie closet and picked out a tie that I thought looked neat and I started wearing it. The whole school thought it looked cool. I don’t think that I’m a trendsetter, well, I guess I do because I wore a tie and people thought it looked cool and wanted to wear one too. But I never expected to become a trendsetter.

See, the confident kids never admit that they actually set out to start a trend. It’s cool not to care. But you kinda need to.
Which brings me to point number two: Law of Timing. For a trend to pick up followers and last, it has to arrive at just the right moment.

11-year-old Rolando Chavez learned this one the hard way, when his trend went bust. Rolando wanted to create a yo-yo fad at Longfellow Middle School. According to his mom, he was still hopeful on the first day:

Vivian Chavez: People were making a circle around him and watching him play and telling him, “Can you do the dog, around the world?” Not only did it make him popular in that moment, you know popularity is a temporary thing, they also said “I know that, I’m going to do that next time.”

But Rolando said there was no next time…

Rolando Chavez: The next day nobody brought a yoyo and it was almost the end of school. We didn’t really do anything with yo-yos anymore.

Yo-yos just couldn’t compete with the anticipation of summer vacation. And maybe another problem was, yo-yo tricks get old pretty quick.

Peer pressure thrives on suspense, which brings me to the third law: The Law of Unavailability. Whatever you have should be hard for others to get, leaving people asking, “Where did you find that?”

Memi Vaughn calls herself a trend-setter.

Memi: So what we’re hearing here today is ’68 Thunderbird with suicide doors, Cadillac hood caps, it’s a 429 engine, it runs so smooth, a leather vinyl top… this is the classic of all classics.

Sometimes trends are big-ticket items. Cars like Memi’s usually cost $2,000 to $8,000, when a new compact car costs a couple thousand more. Her friends used to want new cars. Now, everybody’s asking where she got hers, and Memi is left convincing people not to buy old cars. Her whole point was to be different.

And the whole point of marketing is to create the next big trend, right? The best way to do that is to remember the most influential kids in your ninth grade class. And try to tap that kind of power.

In Berkeley, I’m Thessaly La Force for Marketplace.

HOST BACK ANNOUNCE: “Peer Pressure Marketing” is part of a special series Young Bucks, produced by Youth Radio.