Currently sharing a household with an adolescent or remember being one? Have you lived through this phase and have the battle scars to prove it?

Being a parent is not easy. We have no instruction book and we often learn the hard way through trial and error. One of the biggest challenges is knowing when to adapt communications styles as children grow into adults. So, I got to wondering, as marketers can we learn from the lessons of finding a successful parent-adolescent style of communication? Please take a read and let me know if we can.

One-way Communication Works Early On

As a parent you have a number jobs to do including looking out for what’s best for your kids. You have a lot of experience to draw on and often use your unquestioned authority to dole out commands on just about everything.

For the most part, this one-way delivery works pretty well for most day-to-day tasks for both you and your child. It’s a pretty efficient system–your child trusts you to do what’s best for them and, unless they are tired, hungry, or just in one of those moods, he or she accepts the unidirectional communication style without too much fuss.

Adolescent years? Think again

Then come the adolescent years and that one-way stuff communication style goes right out the window. As your teen starts the process of becoming an adult they begin to make their own decisions on what’s best for them. They start listening to their friends for input more than they listen to you. They expect to be asked to do things, not told, and even when asked they are pretty good at sniffing out if a request is actually a command cloaked as a question. They have their own opinions and expect to have those opinions respected and listened to. They have finely tuned hearing and have no problem ignoring anything they don’t believe to be valuable to them at that moment.

What you discover as a parent, and usually through painful trial and error, is if you want to engage your teen, you need to stop talking and start listening. You need to adjust your approach. It’s best to make suggestions and to collaborate with your child, and do this with no predetermined expectations of any particular outcome.

Relationships count more than ever.

Traditional Marketing First Evolved When Consumers Trusted Institutions

For the most part, traditional marketing approaches today were born out of an era of mass marketing developed in the 50′s and 60′s. During this post-war period institutions were trusted and always seen as having our best interests in mind. Brand X dictated, “You need this product,” and we went out and bought it in droves.

This command-and-control method was efficient and effective, and it seemed to benefit both the brand and the consumer. The traditional marketing industry blossomed into the multi-billion-dollar play that it is today.

The Consumer Matured

Then something changed along the way. Consumers matured. They stopped trusting institutions. They stopped listening to those one-way commands unless, on a rare occasion, it met their demands at the moment. They started looking to their friends as trusted advisors when they needed recommendations.

Consumers found their voice and with the advent of social media it was as powerful, or even more powerful, than any brand’s.

Oblivious and Acting as “Parental Units”

Unfortunately, like many parents, some brands still cling to the old methods of command and control when communicating with their marketplace or community. They still shell out one-way commands: “I’m the boss, listen to me. I know what’s best for you.” They rarely really listen, and relationships are only a focus when they need something from the prospective customer. Sure, they try to act cool and to entertain in order to get attention of the market, but for the most part they are ignored. Ironically, while avoiding changing their communication style, brands have become used to this extremely low feedback and often get very excited when a response rate breaks into double digits.

To their prospective market they have sadly become ‘parental units‘–to be tolerated and used only when the market feels they’re worthy. This is not a fun place to be no matter if you are a parent or a brand.

Have some thoughts to share on these parallel relationships between parents and their children and brands and their customers? Do so in the comments, and come back on Monday for the wrap-up!

Tags: brand reputation, social media engagement, social media listening