How to innovate in your marketing: Ask a teenager

If you’re a company looking to use social media and content in innovative ways, ask a teenager.
And not because you want to market to teens (although you might), but because teenage behavior online draws a kind of road map to where marketing is going.

Here’s what I mean: My 17-year-old daughter bought a prom dress online this week. Before it even shipped from the warehouse, she had already posted a photo of it in a private Facebook group that the girls in her school set up weeks ago expressly to showcase what dress they were wearing to the prom, which is in May.

The girls are essentially staking their dress claim and (at the same time) soliciting validation for their choices with likes and comments of their peers.

In other words:

Then: You bought a dress at a dress shop. You wore it to prom and hoped no one else had the same dress as you. (Or if they did, you hoped you looked better in it.)

Now: “Remember that time when someone else showed up wearing the same dress to prom that I did?” said No Teen