Marketers want to go back to school  ( June '18,2007, FE)

Athletes, if they are talented, train hard and get a break or two, can climb the sports ladder from high school to college to the pros. Madison Avenue, sensing a lucrative opportunity, is heading the other way. Decades after marketers began selling products by capitalising on consumer interest in professional teams, then college teams, they are becoming big boosters of high school sports.

Big media companies are getting into the market as well, in part by offering high school competitors a taste of the exposure that is typically lavishedon college and pro athletes. In March, the CSTV Networks division of the CBS Corporation—the “CS” stands for college sports—acquired MaxPreps, which operates a Website (maxpreps.com) and has more than a million high school athletes in its database. Last month, CSTV began creating video-on-demand TV cha-nnels under the MaxPreps brand carrying high school sports programming. Another media giant, the Time Inc division of Time Warner, formed an alliance in December with Takkle, which operates a social-networking Web site for high school athletes (takkle.com). Visitors to the site can nominate students for the familiar “Face in the Crowd” feature in Sports Illustrated magazine.

“High school kids are more sophisticated than a generation ago,” said Mark Ford, president and publisher of Sports Illustrated in New York, “and brands like Nike and Gatorade are on this, reaching athletes at a much earlier stage than they previously have.” The goal is to gain favor with student athletes and also their coaches, teachers and principals—not to mention their fans, friends and families.

“Energy for student athletes, and the moms who keep up with them” is, for instance, the theme of advertisements for EAS AdvantEDGE nutritional bars and shakes, sold by Abbott Laboratories.

High school athletes buy all the obvious products—sneakers, gear, sports beverages—along with general items like grooming aids, magazines and video games. Many high schoolers shop for the family while their parents work, so they may be buying groceries along with items for themselves.

Students can also influence the purchasing choices of their parents in important categories like cell phones and computers. For example, in 2005 Allstate Insurance started coordinating a programme for local agents “to demonstrate their support of high school athletes,” said Lisa Cochrane, vice-president for integrated marketing communications at Allstate in Northbrook, Ill. Today, the brand is present in more than 700 high schools where agents sponsor teams and make donations to athletic departments. “In many, many communities, high school athletics is one of the premier events,” Cochrane said, adding: “Teen-agers themselves are not big customers for insurance; they will be, in the future.”

The trend is also visible in the popular culture, as two TV series—“Friday Night Lights” on NBC and “One Tree Hill” on CW—are centered on high school teams that play football and basketball, respectively. Both have attracted sponsors willing to pay to weave their brands into plot lines; among them are Applebee’s restaurants, Cingular Wireless and Secret deodorant.

“They’re trying to find unique ways to reach the teen audience,” Webb said of marketers, adding that cheerleaders and other student athletes are especially attractive because “they’re visible, they’re leaders and they’re influential.”