Peter Ruppert's Blog

Where is the market for your new artist? Identifying target segments can sometimes turn out to be an intuition-based strategy. The basic premise is that an older ie more complex or harmonious sound works better with an older audience whilst greater rhythmic emphasis works better with teens.

This approach succeeds some of the time but an analytical perspective reveals that there is another more powerful way of looking at it. Commercial success, in the short term is dependent upon building a strong emotional connection in the teenage segment. It is also a pre-condition for enduring long-term success. The Killers, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce and Pink all share a strong connection with teens that has extended into the older age groups.

Other artists with sufficiently strong teen support that are likely to join them for a long and rich career are Rihanna, Chris Brown, Scouting For Girls and Katy Perry. This of course assumes that their product remains consistently good.

Typically, when we hear the term “teen artists” we think of artists like Rihanna, Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana or JLS. The truth however is that there is a whole range of artists we wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in this young segment. Favourites of theirs include the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kings of Leon and Snow Patrol. All artists happily at home on AC radio stations.

The chart below shows how deeply affected teens are by Kings of Leon. A Love score of 22% spreads like a virus. Album sales are however likely to come from the 20-29 year old bordering age group ie adults with disposable income.

 Kings of Leon are yet to build a strong relationship in the older demographic segments. But to illustrate what an established relationship looks like, have a look at the graph below for Coldplay which shows the Love for the artist from teens to the 50-59s.

Cultivating a sizeable teen fan community isn’t easy and nor is it cheap. There is very little radio listening amongst young people which makes it much harder to achieve mass market awareness swiftly. However, since there is very little room for new music on radio playlists nowadays there is little to miss out on.

The big advantage of targeting teens stems from the much overlooked fact that they much more easily in love with artists and their music than older age groups. And when they do, word of mouth is likely to drive awareness and that’s when your digital marketing campaign should really kick in.

When the first web 2.0 social network sites launched, their members were mostly teen mobs. Today there are as many adults on these sites as there are teens which makes spreading the word into other segments so much easier thereby speeding the journey from Teens to Tesco’s.