How to market to young girls -the power of twitter
I do believe that in this country we have a silent power that we often ignore and that is the power of teenage girls and what collectively they are able to do. They diligently and often quietly (to their parents) work away on social media, causing incredible movement and spiralling unknowns to fame and fortune, yet to the rest of us seem disengaged and disinterested in anything.
What enterprising skills these young girls know and, if only they could be harnessed in a great way, what would we be able to create as a society?
I always remember talking to three young people about marketing and their philosophy was easy. To make something go viral, you needed to look in three directions; Gods, Gays and Girls. Gods being the people others look up to and the others, self-explanatory. In the mind of the youth, they know where the power lies and more often than not, the girls have it.
To show you this power, I want to walk you through a recent boy band, Reconnected, who will be storming into the charts soon. They are in no doubt who will put them there; not a record company, not a rich mentor, but their loyal fans of teenage girls.
Here is a little background on this band so you can get up to speed.
Reconnected first became known as boy band ‘Connected’ that competed in talent show Britain’s Got Talent in 2010. The young boy band successfully made it to the finals of the talent show.
As ‘Connected’ they travelled up and down the country performing on the BGT tour, they instantly became very popular with girls aged 13-15 years old. The band ‘Connected’ performed their last gig with the twins in Tamworth in front of 20,000 people on 18 July 2010.At the end of July, the group announced on Facebook that Connected had split and the two twins (Myles and Connor Ryan) were leaving to form a duo. Leaving Brothers Max & Harry Monday, and friend Matthew Fitzgerald, who made the group ‘Reconnected’. The Connected fan base was quickly torn apart as more and more people became aware of the ‘Connected’ split. Connected fans slowly grew into Reconnected fans, or Myles and Connor fans.
However the hard work of these Reconnected boys and their loyal followers made sure that Reconnected kept going and announced last month that they have been signed by Duncan Bonneting of RKA records.
So how did a group go from 15 minutes of fame on BGT to disbanding, forming again and getting a record deal, all without much public knowledge?
One answer, GIRLS!
For those of you that think our youth are not using Twitter think again; they are using it in a very unique and interesting way. They use it for specialised groups of people like them, interested in the same things as them to make a noise about their interests.
And this is how these girls got Reconnected to where they are today, a record deal.
These girls diligently followed them, in fact hung on their every word, they told their friends about them, they attempted to get Reconnected to tour the world together as one loyal unit to tell more girls about them to get them more followers and to generally virally spread the word. They changed their Twitter names to the band members names, they Tweeted about them constantly and were always their when the boys needed them. And Reconnected responded by talking to the girls, by making them feel special, by working hard, touring up and down the country, meeting these girls and letting them know they cared. The obsession and lock-in was created, these girls were hooked. Every Friday the three boys try to do a Twitcam – their fan base call them ‘Fitzdryk Fridays.’ A lot of their fans try to go to as many of their gigs as possible, showing every inch of support they have for the three boys. They feel they own them and feel a huge sense of responsibility for their success. And minus the support of the Reconnected boy’s parents, this largely happened without the support of adults, with most adults only knowing they existed when harassed by their teenage daughters to take them up and down the country to Reconnected gigs.
And what is for me the most unusual thing is that we think that movements like this take numbers and large numbers, but looking at their Facebook account, Twitter feeds and Twitcam stats, It looks like a loyal following of around 200.
No, I don’t write this because I want you to like boy bands or even because I like them, but just to show you that there is a silent force at work out 
there, a force that we need to harness. A force that parents, teachers and marketeers alike would do well to take note of.
If One Direction, a truly manufactured band, makes it onto the scene at the same time, it will be interesting to see how these two bands fair.
Reconnected had worked hard, got through a lot of adversity and have kept loyal to their fans and their fans have repaid them by plugging away and away on their behalf as an unpaid workforce.
So next time your teen daughter is absorbed in her computer and looking like she is doing nothing, think again. What she is doing may be truly important to her and to the success of the next big thing and we should all know by now, only a fool comes between a teen and her boy band.
