Conference coverage by Shia Kapos:

Numbers have been flying like fast balls at Wrigley Field and facts are a blur as I sit in the back row trying to understand the balloon bar graph that's supposed to give me marketing facts.

As I sift through it, here at the "Connecting With Youth: Fresh Approaches to Youth Marketing" conference in Chicago, I find one common theme. Parents still have power in what young people buy. And in most families, that power comes from one source. Marketing researchers define the phenomenon as "mom power," "Chico-ismo," for Spanish-language campaigns, and "enforcement" as in mom is the enforcer and makes the decisions that most affect her children and family. As if you didn't know. Mom's power crosses racial and socioeconomic lines and it starts when we're young. Kids younger than 13 don't watch TV alone — they watch with their families.

"It allows them to have a conversation about the product with the person who would be buying it," says Debbie Salomon, a kids research director at MindShare in Chicago.

And parents aren't just passive decision-makers. They take action. When Disney teamed with Britney Spears many belly-button-rings ago, "power moms" didn't like her wardrobe selection. No surprise that the Disney-Spears partnership ended.

Newsletter readers: Come to Ypulse.com to read the rest of this post in the extended entry.

Moms from Hispanic families can be even tougher, says Derene Allen of Santiago Solutions Group in South San Francisco. "The Latino mom plays a significant role in purchasing," says Allen. When she says no, she means it. The Hispanic moms (like traditional Greek, Jewish and other ethnic moms) "is very protective and has a key role in making decisions, always with the best intentions in mind."

The power of mom and family is so profound, says Paul Acerbi, researcher for Synovate, it could change the fabric of family as we have known it. That was especially vivid during his presentation about how parents influence their children.

His example: One mom so wanted her four sons to stay home that she let one of them live in a tent in the back yard. She let them have their own smoking room (she didn't even mind the gas cans nearby) and she encouraged her sons' friends to come over Friday night to drink, smoke and party. All that matters is that they stay close to home. Is it any wonder that more men than ever age 24 to 29 never move out? No rent, mom makes dinner and does the laundry.

What does it mean for marketing to youth? It all depends on your target audience — the subset of youth, as it's called. Are you looking at young kids, tweens or teens? The younger they are, the more likely mom or dad is in the room watching TV with and giving the thumbs up on purchases (liked those Tony Hawk Bagel Bites!). The older they get may mean kids don't want to see mom or dad in an advertisement, but they're happy to have the parents purchase the latest gadget.

Acerbi says today's parents purchase stuff for their kids for five
different reasons:

Guilt 8% — Maybe they worked all day and want to make it up to their child.

Ego 30% — Parents want their kids to have fashionable clothes and gadgets.

Love 30% — Just because I love you!

Trend 10% — Every other kid has it so your kid should, too.

Fear 22% — If we buy it, you won't move out to the terrible outside world.

Following are some more wild factoids of the day:

Factoid 1: Kids age 19 to 24 spend 28.1 hours a day multi-tasking. They watch TV while they work on the computer, they download music while they talk on the phone and they listen to music while they play video games.

Factoid 2: 18 million 20- to 34-year-olds live with their parents. (And they're mostly men, I'd bet.)

Factoid 3: 53 percent of parents would prefer that their kids never leave home, according to Synovate's TeenNation research.

From Anastasia: Shia Kapos is a Ypulse reader and Chicago-based freelance journalist who has written for publications such as the Chicago Tribune and People magazine.

Complete Connecting With Youth coverage:

Connecting With Youth Post One
Connecting With Youth Post Three

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