Our mentoring program.

Not only do we believe that kids are the future we also think that in many ways they are the present. At the Redhead Companies we are committed to working with students to help them learn about the business world in a positive, fulfilling, and nurturing way. We currently partner with local high schools as mentors for their students. They attend meetings, write strategies, do research, estimate costs, design ads, program web sites, give oral presentations, and interact with clients. It’s one thing to learn about business from books. It’s another to be out here in the trenches. Today, we provide students with hands-on, front line experience. We want kids to experience what it’s like in the real world but we also don’t want to scare them off with unnecessary pressures. They have enough going on in their lives already.

The last great non-filtered audience?

The twist on our mentoring and intern programs is that we believe strongly that working with young adults can absolutely benefit our clients. And we don’t mean by running out and getting coffee for meetings. First, there are more than 33 million young adults aged 15-21. In 2004, they spent $175 billion on goods and services. Yes, that’s with a “b.”  Not only that, teens and people in their early 20s influence their parents a great deal. Us older folks who are still trying to be cool look to them for what to wear, what to listen to, what to buy. (Think cellphones, i-Pods, clothes, computers, anything on the Internet, even cars.) We think this is big news for two reasons. First, that’s a lot of buying power. Second, we’ve always wondered what influences the buying decisions of this group. It’s our opinion that kids 15-21 are the last bastion of consumers who see the world through unfiltered eyes. They see things in black and white. Either an idea is a good one or it’s not.

So today, in the course of our mentoring work, we bring these young people into the marketing process. We ask their opinions. See how they react to ideas we come up with. And we have them develop concepts of their own. We’re consistently blown away by how intelligent and insightful these kids are. After all, communications is about breaking down walls. It’s about being open to what people have to say. We believe that there is no fresher, more unadulterated thinking than what comes from young people. Now, it’s not an exercise we embark on every day. The point isn’t to ask kids to do our work. But when we throw young opinions into the mix of what we know and what you know, the result is incredibly effective and unique marketing communications.

We’ve had students walking our halls for four years. But, it’s what we see down the road that gets us truly excited.