Back to School Brandwashing: Freecycling for Picky Preteens
What’s an eco-friendly family to do up against mega-million dollar marketing when brand-identity rears its head?
Once upon a time I could hit the local Outrageous Outgrowns, Zwaggle and haggle online for eco-friendly finds, or find green parenting ways to make a difference by showing how to host a kids’ clothing swap among my pals.
But when kids get a bit older and media peer pressure kicks in, tweens and teens are ripe for consumption junction mall rat mentality, sometimes even calling gently used items ‘gross,’ or being turned off by wearing their own friends’ castoffs in a swap-n-shop format…
So how do you effectively combat commercialism and turn brand influence on itself?
I turned to forums, meetups, Googled back to school green style, searched out swap tips from sites like EnviroMom for ideas, and ended up using our own Shaping Youth counter-marketing tactics using the “ThreePs”: Precedent, persuasiveness and peer perpetuation.
Fun sites like Clothing Swap.org have put the glam in green and made an entire business model out of reusing and refreshing wardrobes, donating extras to fabulous causes.
So why not leverage this positive precedent to do the same for the tween green scene? Bye-bye baby goods swaps, hello house party platforms!
Developmentally, preteens dodge social stigma like a paintball game, so unless you’ve got a crunchy green loyalist, using ‘ThreeP’ counter-marketing tactics can turn brandwashing into sport, embedding eco-awareness into the mix in a much more subtle form. Example?
Theme your event to promo a niche ‘target market,’ toss in some green fashionista flicks like Whole Earth Generation’s ‘Turning Green’ Teen Eco Fashion Event, or Teens for Safe Cosmetics demos, invite five friends each OUTside of their immediate cliques and tribes (diff. schools, book club, sports teams, whatever) “by invitation only/you’ve been selected to participate” and voila! An über-hip peer party of ‘au courant’ styles, sizes, and age-size-gender to keep it less garage sale, more ‘boutique’ in feel. You can even add a grassroots eco-philanthropy approach, where kids pick where the unclaimed items will go…
My daughter, for example, latched onto the “Billabong” brand for her wakeboarding persona, as it evidently ‘differentiates her from the girly girls’ so she began turning up her nose at all but the outlet finds or green teen sibling swaps with neighbors who had ‘cool’ clothes or beach themes…
Solution? Turn her Australian brand fixation into eco-awareness for reef rescue…Salute the soulful tenacity of Bethany Hamilton (the teen who lost her arm to shark in Hawaii)…swap freebie finds with an ‘endless summer’ tribute to all things ‘ocean’ in a luau-themed swap-n-shop hunt for Roxy, PacSun, QuickSilver, Fox, and unclaimed clothing going to a clean-n-green ocean or marine wildlife cause. Engage. Inspire. Embed informal learning in fun new ways.
Incentivize kids with a twist on the ‘bring in an outfit, get a ticket to swap’ motif, by adding bonuses for ‘eco-friendly’ fibers or locally produced goods…Let the kids ‘self-price’ and learn entrepreneurial bargaining skills…Or just make it a free-for-all funfest to encourage ‘cool-hunting’ via eco-tactics to recycle brand allure in a positive way.
Who knows? Could be the next indie craze…
Visual Credits: www.ClothingSwap.org
And yet another excuse for me to sing the praises of school uniforms. Trading is the norm with them anyway, everyone exchanges out-grown items (not necessarily to be green, but to save money).
I’m REALLY lucky not to have to deal with the whole “cool clothes for school” thing. It takes so much of the pressure off - both for the kiddos and me.
Agree…I’ve tried to pitch that concept to public schools relentlessly, to no avail, sigh. It would help SO much (in terms of peer stereotyping, bullying, etc. too) but the kids fight it tooth and nail and parents have balked too, saying ‘they’ll find other ways to jockey for social status, from cell phones to hair styles’ but gosh, it’s hard to see kids carve out their identities via brandwashing.
One way we combat this at Shaping Youth is the ‘lift and reveal’ counter-marketing tactics, to ‘trace back’ where certain brands come from and peel off some of the shine…(Like Abercrombie & Fitch and some of their sexist, racist, controversial blunders…makes kids think twice about becoming a human billboard without finding out the backstory)
The opener I use with my animal-loving daughter is, “What if you found out blah-dee-blah cosmetic brand was animal testing, or xyz brand was supporting puppy mills, would you still wear the brand plastered all over you?”
Nope. Didn’t think so.
Great post! I was fortunate enough to work at a high school where there wasn’t as much pressure to dress in name brands as there might be in bigger, more affluent schools. Our girls would frequently trade dresses for dances because they didn’t want to buy new.
When I have kids, I hope my girls eschew spending money on labels that mean nothing in the real scheme of things.
Hey, Kelli, I recognize your name from Ashley’s blog on eco-media (one of our S.Y. children’s television advisors) —You ARE lucky your H.S. had that ‘dress trade’ element goin’ on…can’t say I’ve seen much of that among the Ca. kids here in the Silicon Valley environs. sigh.
Sadly, one thing I’ve noticed in doing work w/the less affluent/high risk schools (for Shaping Youth’s childhood obesity/junk food counter-marketing programs) is that the brand dynamic often kicks in even MORE prominently as a symbol of ’self-worth’ in some tweaked sort of way. (thus the ’shooting people for tennis shoes’ dynamic reported via media) ugh.
I hold recycling and eco-messaging in strong esteem as a counter-marketing opportunity to erase the lines of ‘haves and have nots’ by making it ‘cool’ to be a part of the green scene, regardless of socioeconomics.
In my vision, consumption would draw the ’snooty looks’ as wasteful/drek, whereas collaborative trades would shine as the ‘enlightened’ model for teens to uphold…We’ve planted the seeds, now we’ve just got to nourish the concept!
I can sort of see teen girls getting into the boutique type party but what about the boys who just think their moms are ecogeeks? My 16 year old stepson was just given some money for back-to-school clothes and his Dad agreed to trust him and let him get what he needed. He came back with an $80 T-shirt. Oops.
You know the best alternative to this pre-teen brandwashing would be incorporating uniforms in the schools. I don’t understand the controversy about “how uniforms stunt creativity” when in actually it saves money and it’s very eco-friendly : ) Then moms (and dads) can sneak in swapped items into the closets much easier.
An $80 tee shirt? e-freakin’ gad. sigh. And yah, I’m with ya on the uniforms, and long for such simplicity.
Tara, I’d love to hear more on this self-identifying 16-year old teen…what was the brand? Why did he ‘need it’? etc. etc. As we track the pulse of this stuff at Shaping Youth.
My guess is probably A&F or some other such ‘aspirational’ social status stuff…but in order to ‘counter-market’ we need to know the ‘must haves’ being insidiously sold into the cultural zeitgeist…so give it up for us, ‘k? (even a mini-interview with him?)
Also, I know our S.Y. board advisors are writing a book right now called “Packaging Boyhood” a sequel to their PG version I wrote about here: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=309
They’re doing a survey at Packaging Boyhood.com if he’s interested in participating? (don’t know if they’re offering incentives, but heck, if he sent it in to me, and helped us out as one of our teen advisors (’eyes and ears’ re: youth mindset) he could earn some useful ’service credits’ for his college resume, while helping out our nonprofit 501c3…If he’s interested, ping me! (amy at shaping youth dot org) as it helps our own work in finding solutions to tap into the core consumption ‘motivation/mindset’ and the influencing factors. (cause/effect)
[...] green and save on clothing: 4. Plan a clothing swap with other families, and pass on the clothes your kids have outgrown. Invite families with kids of [...]
[...] green and save on clothing: 4. Plan a clothing swap with other families, and pass on the clothes your kids have outgrown. Invite families with kids of [...]