• by Lynn Russo Whylly , November 29, 2007

Okay, listen up all you teen marketers. Girls are on to you. They’re tired of ads that underestimate and insult their intelligence. They want ads that are authentic, true and funny, but not over the top. If it looks phony, they’ll “flip” it — change the channel, turn the page or delete the message.

3iying is, according to its Web site, 3iying.com, an “all-girl strategic and creative think tank” whose mission is to help mass-scale brands become more relevant to the “new millennium” girl. “The gap,” they claim, “between what girls want and what the marketing community is giving them has grown so vast that we are now facing a relevancy crisis.”

This summer, the masterminds behind 3iying conducted a study involving hundreds of girls ages 15 – 24. They asked the volunteers to look at print ads that target young girls, and then recorded their reactions: “It looks like something a guy would jerk off to,” “There’s no way those boobs are real,” and “I don’t identify with this woman at all,” were just a few. Their findings, released in the “Relevancy report 2007,” con- clude that most of the marketing that targets young women today is based on outdated stereotypes that are turn-offs to the Internet-era girl, who, they claim, is “faster, smarter, and more selective than ever.”