By Alexander Coolidge
Post staff reporter

Jen Gasparec is a 16-year-old junior at Mother of Mercy High in Westwood who plays soccer, participates in Spanish Club and listens to rock bands like New Found Glory, Simple Plan and Good Charlotte. She also likes to give corporate heavyweights her opinions on their latest products — and they're listening.

Jen is one of roughly 3,600 Greater Cincinnati teens who are part of a Procter & Gamble effort to use high-tech techniques to create old-fashioned word-of-mouth among an influential audience: teenagers. The marketing effort even has a trendy name — Tremor.

Tremor is a burgeoning advertising arm of the Cincinnati-based consumer products giant that's already enlisted about 280,000 teens nationwide to generate buzz about its latest merchandise. Other consumer products companies are tapping into the demographic, paying P&G for the advertising.

It's the latest effort by the company that invented the soap opera to sell products to break new ground in advertising and marketing.

For Tremor, P&G targets teens with outgoing personalities who are involved in activities and have lots of friends. The company believes such youth, dubbed "connectors," are influential and can spread advertising messages both online and in person. The technique has been dubbed "viral'' marketing because it spreads largely by word-of-mouth and the Internet.

Executives say Tremor is an important way to get P&G's message out as the fragmentation of mass media makes it more difficult to reach consumers. For example, P&G estimates it takes 97 commercials to reach 80 percent of women aged 18 to 49 today, versus just three ads in 1965 when the three major TV networks were unchallenged by cable and other media.

By previewing new products to a select part of the teen population, P&G officials believe their network of youngsters can create genuine excitement and conversation in lunch rooms and elsewhere — possibly more so than an expensive television ad campaign.

For example P&G has tested a new line of its Cover Girl Outlast Lipcolor lipstick in Providence, R.I., using product information and sample cards. That campaign resulted in a 14 percent boost in sales in that market in eight weeks, officials said. They found that "connectors'' talked with an average of nine people about the product and that two-thirds of those people intended to make a purchase.

The program offers partici pants an inside look at upcoming products, events or services in exchange for their input and interest, said Cincinnati-based Tremor chief executive Ted Woehrle. When successful, marketing subjects can see a 10 to 30 percent increase in sales or viewership, he said.

"We offer them the inside scoop and influence," he said. "If you get the right 1 percent, you have the critical mass required to make a difference."

Marketers might get a fresh insight into Tremor's influence this weekend as DreamWorks Studios releases the movie "Eurotrip." The studio solicited title suggestions from Tremor teens last year, settling on a name submitted by 20 teenagers from more than 60,000 suggestions.

Tremor has used its marketing technique to hype new flavors or other offerings by Pringles potato chips, Herbal Essences shampoo and Noxzema skin care for P&G.

Covington-based Ashland has tapped into it for its Valvoline motor oil and Coca-Cola has done the same for its soda.

Woehrle said Tremor's focus on about 1 percent of teens who are well-connected and influential is enough to influence entire populations of their peers. The company often recruits teens for this volunteer network with ads on popular teen Web sites that link to www.tremor.com.

About 10 percent of teens who take a seven-question survey about themselves and their social activities and network make the cut. Recruited teens are sent an information kit by mail that includes a notification to parents.

Gasparec said P&G officials contacted her about a year ago first by calling her parents, Steve and Pam, explaining the initiative and asking if they thought she'd be interested.

"(My parents) thought it was a good idea — they know I like to give my opinion," she said. "It sounded cool, a great way to give input."

Since she joined, Jen has offered her opinion on everything from music demos to facial scrubs. She's also previewed unreleased songs by Avril Lavigne last summer and Super Bowl ads before they aired.

She interacts with Tremor via e-mail or regular mail about two or three times a month.

Since part of the advertising initiative's appeal is being below the radar, P&G officials are tight-lipped on how many clients they have or the total number of campaigns they've done. But they say eight national campaigns were conducted in 2003 costing clients roughly $1 million apiece.

Industry experts say the initiative is an effective way of reaching some consumers who otherwise tune out traditional advertising in a culture saturated in commercials.

The trick is that participants don't necessarily realize they're part of an underground advertising campaign. The new product or service is teased into a conversation and people, if interested, pass the word along.

Gasparec said she's never felt awkward about passing out product samples to friends because they tend to arrive in the mail when she already has company.

"It's usually girly stuff, so we're into that and we say 'Let's try it,'" she said. "I don't talk about products with other friends — we talk about boys and parties."

Tremor officials stress they are up front with teen-agers in the network: The company is in the business of selling products for which they're soliciting input.

Advertising experts say intriguing items will generate interest, not just feedback.

"It's tapping the gossip factor — people like to tell their friends about the next big thing," said Michael Stalbaum, chief executive of Internet advertiser Unreal Marketing Solutions in Philadelphia.

While not an effective method to begin every advertising campaign, he said the World Wide Web was a good way to cultivate teens and other specialty markets.

Stalbaum said viral techniques are popular for hyping music and new technology products on the Web.

Since participants can't taste or touch P&G products online, mailed items add another dimension to the Internet activity. Vincent Thome, interactive developer at Albuquerque advertising firm McKee Wallwork Henderson, said using the Internet is a key component of reaching the teen market.

"This is a generation that's grown up with the computer," he said. "I'm pretty enthusiastic to see how this changes marketing as these kids graduate college in the next 10 years."

Tremor has been successful enough that P&G wants it to construct a similar network of mothers to pitch more products.

Posted 03/08/04

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