By Emily Segal

As a market research intern for Next Engine, a technology design partner for many of the largest companies in the U.S., Krista Knighton’ 14 spent four to six hours a day researching what types of commercials her “own demographic of young people” responded best to. This informatinon will be used to help the company sell their new product, a keyboard, to a wide variety of people.

Knighton researched online for factors that make successful commercials targeting teenagers and, after creating a PowerPoint presentation summarizing what she had discovered, presented the information at meetings about the upcoming commercial.

“What I found didn’t actually surprise me very much: teenagers and young people generally follow what other people do, especially when they’re older,” said Knighton.

Because of this, social media like Facebook and Twitter are the best ways for companies to promote what they are selling. The idea is that once teenagers see what their friends and family are “liking” on Facebook or “following” on Twitter, they will most likely tag along and begin to “like” and “follow” the same things, thus increasing the amount of “buzz,” or discussion, about a certain company or product.

“I’m really glad I took this internship because I think marketing is an important part of many professions,” Knighton said. “[It] was also something I didn’t know much about but ended up being really interesting.”