Sharpie for Sharper Students

It’s no surprise that teens are using pen and paper less and less for their writing needs. That’s why getting Sharpie as a client with the objective of targeting 13-15 year olds, at first, seemed like a long shot. However during a focus group of 6 teenage girls it was discovered that even though a lot of their assignments are submitted digitally, they still take a lot of notes with pen and paper during their classes, and that many of their teachers do not allow laptops to be used during class.

The girls were between the ages of 13 and 15 and they all said they associate Sharpie with labeling. However, an interesting observation was that they referred to using Sharpie markers and pens to make study notes and q-cards for studying. They also admitted that getting good grades was the biggest stress in their lives and they devoted a lot of time and effort into achieving high grades. This led to the insight that even though teens are comminuting less through handwriting, when they need to study or memorize they’ll naturally refer back to writing. This insight led to the idea of shifting the engrained association of Sharpie with “labeling” to “it helps me study and get good grades.” The objective of the strategy became to convince them to use Sharpie Pens for all their writing, not just studying, and trust that by doing so it will help them memorize and get better grades.

Throughout the creation of this campaign it was relieving to know that young teens still write. It was also interesting to see that they naturally resort to writing themselves for memorization purposes. Many studies have shown that writing helps one retain information better than simply reading it or typing it out. Because of the reinforcements backing the primary research, observation, and theory behind this campaign I felt it was a strong collaborative team effort and strive to have the same level, or better, of stability in each of my campaigns.