Marketers tap chatty young teens, and hit a hot button

A letter is sent to parents explaining their child's role, Knox says, adding that youths don't receive tangible rewards beyond product samples, which go out in about 30 percent of cases.

Actually, the letter home is nothing more than a placard announcing a child has been selected to influence companies, says Bob Aluja, a professor of marketing at Xavier University in Cincinnati. It is addressed to youths on the assumption it will be passed along to parents. He says he has talked to children who threw away the notice.

The notice intended for parents is also incomplete, asserts Dr. Aluja. "They leave out that they're gathering research information from your child, they leave out that your child will be ... asked to participate in focus groups [for which product manufacturers] will give the child $75 to $150 a month. And they leave out that while they don't tell your child not to tell, they also don't say to the child 'When you go to your friends, let them know that you're working for Tremor.' "

"What these companies are doing is very intrusive, they're penetrating kids' private time," says Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, author of "Talking to Tweens." She counsels parents to hunker down with children in front of the computer. When ads pop up, asking them to take surveys or input personal information, talk about it. "[Ask] 'What do you think they're trying to do?' Just take the child through a growing awareness."

Others maintain that the young have the right to a private world, within reason. "If it's a new brand of deodorant or a new crunchy snack, and they want to feel 'first,' no big deal," says Marian Salzman, author of books on marketing, in an e-mail. "Teens are living in a world where everything is marketing, and part of coming of age is learning to say no."

Still, saying no to friends could mean applying marketing radar to once-safe relationships.

"I have a big issue with the corruption of what is a valuable form of commercial information: disinterested information," says Juliet Schor, a sociologist and author of several books, including "Born to Buy." "The more you do of this, the harder it is to know ... who's marketing to you, and do you have to suspect your friends?"

Once an exchange involves secrecy it is no longer mutually rewarding, says Ms. Schor. "It's a one-way thing in which the 'marketer child' is using the others.... It's teaching children to regard their friends as exploitable assets."

Schor cites the "rhetoric of secrecy" used by marketers such as girlsintelligenceagency.com (GIA), which she says attracts children 8 and even younger, encouraging, for example, product- centered slumber parties. (GIA did not return calls seeking comment.)

Ultimately, word of mouth could itself be the best protection against what some have termed buzzploitation.

"Buzz marketing ... is all about honesty," says Mark Hughes, a marketing consultant and author. "Undercover" marketing, he says, crosses a line from genuine word of mouth to manufactured buzz. That line may become clearer as groups like WOMMA help marketers find consensus on tactics.

Watch groups could then alert parents and youths about firms that cross it, says Mr. Hughes. Good word of mouth spreads fast, he says. "But bad word of mouth spreads about 30 times faster."

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