Marketers Struggle to Reach Tweens

This past weekend, Hilary Duff's new movie Raise Your Voice tanked leaving Hollywood scratching its head figuring it had a sure thing.

"The young female movies are almost impossible to figure out right now," one studio marketing executive said. "The girls are just rejecting the young female movies. They are a fickle segment of the audience, and it's pretty hard to figure out who is going to go to these movies."

Trying to identify tween trends is not an easy task. In fact, it's almost pointless. Trends move quickly enough in older demos but with tweens, trends last for periods of time far too short to capitalize on, especially for a Hollywood movie that takes a year start to finish.

Hollywood's worst enemy is a successful movie. It creates an imperfect definition of what consumers want and is then beaten dead with sequels and copycats that are far behind a trend before the camera even roles.

A better strategy would be an original idea. Yes, we know they're in short supply and hard to create but go on, give it a try.