What Do Teens Want?

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Blink-182 rule #4: Adults really can influence teens.

Contrary to popular opinion, says DeLonge, teens don't despise the idea of growing up. In fact, he says, they can't wait to grow up and are quick to idolize people who are older than they are and who embody their own aspirations. "As a kid you're always looking for direction," he says. "You look up to people, and you want them to show you what's cool."

Teens' admiration for people who are ahead of them in life carries over into their behavior as consumers, according to DeLonge. "Everything they buy is associated with someone they think is cool," he says. DeLonge notes that he and Hoppus hired a snowboarder to run day-to-day operations at Loserkids, knowing that that would provide instant credibility to the site. "We didn't want some guy who would just look at sales charts," he says.

DeLonge concedes that even he and Hoppus aren't above imitating the lifestyle of older folks, noting that they have taken up golf. But he insists the line has to be drawn somewhere. "We won't wear golf clothes," he says. "I'm the only guy on the course with a T-shirt and tattoos."

I ask the girls to describe the ideal store.

"It depends on who you are," says one.

"OK," I persist, "what's the ideal store for who you are?"

"I don't know," she says, pausing a moment to reflect. "Who am I?"

Blink-182 rule #5: Think subculture.

Teenagers often seem like professional rebels. But DeLonge observes that even teens who are determined to stand out usually harbor an intense desire to blend in as well. "It's a weird circular thing," he explains. "On one hand you want to be different, but on the other you really want to fit in." The compromise that teens typically strike, he says, is to end up fitting into some community that offers homogeneity within the group but that allows them to stand out from teens in other groups. "Kids are constantly attaching themselves to some look or scene in an effort to search out their identity," says DeLonge.

He notes that businesses can discover large, lucrative niches by orienting themselves toward a particular teen lifestyle -- jocky, artsy, hip-hop, and so forth. DeLonge and Hoppus built Blink's core following, as well as Loserkids' customer base, around teen enthusiasts of board sports -- that is, skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing. They did it because they themselves were skateboarders, but it has worked out to be a fortuitous focus: not only has the board-sport community grown into the millions, particularly with the explosion in the popularity of snowboarding, but the music and clothing associated with it have caught on with young people outside that community as well.

Hoppus points out with no small amount of disdain that some advertisers have tried to cash in on the board-sport craze by arbitrarily sprinkling skateboarders throughout their efforts -- and that skateboarders are all of a sudden appearing in a growing number of MTV rock videos. "Nobody's fooled by that," he says. (Personally, I'm pleased to hear that rock-video producers can be as lame as the rest of us.)

I ask the girls what they think of Filene's, a traditional department store at one end of the mall, and they tell me they go there occasionally "just to try on funny stuff you'd never buy." Later they take me to an accessories store called Claire's that's jammed with racks of brightly colored hair clips, plastic necklaces, and novelty pens; it reminds me of a candy store. I interrupt a slap-bracelet melee to ask the girls whom they think this store is targeted to. Twelve-year-olds, they tell me, before shrieking at the discovery of a shelf filled with miniature Slinkies. I look around; I see one girl who looks about 12, and eight girls who look 15.

Blink-182 rule #6: Lighten up.

Teenagers relate to humor, silliness, and irreverence more easily than to any other styles, says Hoppus. "Kids are trapped in school all day long, dealing with serious stuff," he explains. "They don't get as many laughs as grown-ups do."

In fact, DeLonge and Hoppus agree that a certain sharp-edged silliness in their own relationship is a cornerstone of Blink's success. "We don't take anything we do seriously," says DeLonge. Laughing at someone else's expense is particularly rewarding for teens, says Hoppus. "Most of us go through that stage with a lot of insecurity and self-doubt," he says, "and there's no question you feel better about yourself if you can cut someone else down in a funny way. Tom and I have made a career out of it."

Before we leave the mall, the girls afford their most enthusiastic thumbs-up of the evening to a hemp-bracelet kit. I found it in the Discovery Channel Store.

My rule: Never give up.

David H. Freedman is a contributor to Inc.

Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

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David H. Freedman

A Boston-based contributing editor, Freedman is the co-author of A Perfect Mess, which examines the useful role of disorder in daily life, business, and science. His other books include Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines; At Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion (co-authored with Charles C. Mann); and Brainmakers: How Scientists are Moving Beyond Computers to Create a Rival to the Human Brain.

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