Lucrative Side of Teen-Age Anxieties : Marketing: Adolescent girls will have about $2,800 each this year to spend on discretionary purchases such as cosmetics. That fact is not lost on makers of consumer goods.

In a crowded classroom, teen-age girls ogle products none of them have seen before. They are fascinated by one gadget several say could save them from embarrassment when guys are around: a make-up kit with a secret compartment.

The hidden storage area is concealed behind a compact mirror made specifically to store items that no teen-age girl wants a teen-age boy to see: tampons, condoms and birth control pills.

One girl is ready to order several of the kits on the spot. “Do you know how embarrassing it can be when the wrong thing drops out of your purse?” said Renee Durfey, who was a senior at Rancho Bernardo High School outside San Diego when polled for marketing advice. “How can I get one of these?”

Several months ago, she couldn’t. But she can now find it at her local Target store because hundreds of other girls grilled by researchers shared her “I-need-it-right-now” opinion. The adolescent anxieties of Durfey--and the nation’s 11.5 million teen-age girls--make great marketing fodder for thousands of firms eager to cash in on the estimated $32 billion that girls ages 13 to 19 will spend over the next year, considerably more than the estimated $22 billion that teen-age boys will spend.

While the makers of video games and snack foods concentrate on teen-age boys, it is teen-age girls who have increasingly become the targets of many consumer goods firms that know an easy mark when they spot it. Teen-age girls have outspent boys for each of the last 40 years, especially during the fall and Christmas seasons--and the differential keeps growing. The prospect of such a buying spree is especially welcome this year to retailers that are struggling through some of the toughest times in memory. One reason marketers are watching teen-age girls so closely is because, for the first time in 15 years, the market is actually growing in size. Over the next decade, this group will grow 10%, according to demographers.

For many marketers, the question isn’t whether to go after them--but how. And that’s where many stumble. Marketing experts say that no matter what writers of TV shows like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place” would have consumers believe, most teen-age girls today are surprisingly conservative in their attitudes and buying habits.

Teen-age girls “are living in an age of unbelievable fear,” said Carol Moog, a marketing psychologist from Bala Cynwyd, Pa. “They live in fear of dying of a pimple.”

Of course, boys don’t want pimples either. But teen-age girls, much more than boys, want to blend in with the crowd--not stand out, say marketing psychologists. Most teen-age girls are prone to purchasing things that they believe will help relieve their personal anxieties about pimples, menstruation and body odor.

“These girls are very, very conservative,” said Marian Salzman, president of the New York youth marketing firm BKG Youth. “They have a career plan to be married in their early 20s. That’s very different from even a decade ago, when young girls would rather have been dead than married before 30.”

Sex is not a selling point to teen-age girls like it is to boys, said Salzman. “You have to appeal to security, family and their conservative natures.”

To reach girls, marketers spend tens of billions of dollars annually buying ads in magazines such as Seventeen and Teen and on networks like MTV, trying to spur teens into early adulthood.

Young girls will each spend about $2,800 this year on discretionary purchases such as compact discs and cosmetics--double what they spent just a decade ago. And consider this: The typical teen-age girl replaces her entire wardrobe every two years. By contrast, boys spend half as much on clothing.

“There is this constant pressure on young girls to be ‘good’ consumers” and buy far more than they need, said Michael Jacobson, co-founder of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Commercialism. “You’ll never find articles in teen-age magazines about being natural and not wearing makeup. Their advertisers wouldn’t stand for it.”

Instead, many marketers try to sell by constantly tapping into the insecurities that young girls share. For years, marketers from the makers of Dial soap (“Aren’t you glad you use Dial?”) to Head & Shoulders shampoo (“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”) have tapped into consumers’ insecurities. But marketing psychologists say that teen-age girls are especially susceptible to these emotionally driven messages.

Teen-age girls “are going through such a tumultuous period physically, mentally and emotionally--many marketers try to play off these changes,” said Peter Zollo, president of Northbrook, Ill.-based Teen-age Research Unlimited.

Some teen-agers joke about the in-your-face ads that Oxy 10, the pimple medication, has run for years. Executives at SmithKline Beecham Consumer Brands, which makes Oxy products, insist that they do not try to intimidate young girls--who account for just under 50% of their market.

But ad researchers say SmithKline is one of the biggest spenders in teen-age research in the country. The results of this research are often anxiety-riddled ads, such as one for Oxy 10 now airing. The spot features an attractive teen-age girl who is afraid to sit near the stage at a rock concert because “maybe they’ll put a huge spotlight on my zits.”

Even at last year’s Miss Teen-Age America competition, there was joking among contestants about how to “Oxycute” their blemishes, said Samantha Zogg, a San Diego resident who won the competition.

“Sometimes scare tactics really work,” said Zogg, “But then you stop and ask yourself, if that stuff is so strong, what is this stuff going to do to my skin?”

Some advertisers who target young girls combine the emotions of fear--and assurance--in the very same message. Tampax, for example, ran print ads for its toll-free phone line that showed a teen-age girl on the telephone receiving this answer to her question from someone at the other end: “Yes, you’ll still be a virgin.”

Two years ago, Mennen introduced Teen Spirit antiperspirant with the hopes of attracting throngs of teen-age girls. The company quickly discovered few teen-agers like to buy anything that has the word “teen” on it. “We were stretching it a little,” said Michele Kaminski, category marketing manager at Mennen, who now says it is mostly aimed at girls ages 9 to 14.

In fact, the best publicity the brand got its first year wasn’t even from its own ads. Rather, the popular rock group Nirvana introduced a provocative video called “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The song is not about the deodorant, but is actually about a high-school assembly gone haywire.

“They say the name was coincidence,” said Kaminski, “but we don’t believe that.”

Some firms also believe that they can attract teen-age girls with enthusiastic messages such as Teen Spirit print ads, which show giggly, cheerleader-like girls jumping into the air. Experts say few girls can relate to that.

“Marketers always seem to overlook the core values that young girls have,” said Irma Zandl, president of the New York teen-age research firm, Xtreme. “These girls just want to be appreciated--and loved.”

But that’s not always a simple a message to get across. That’s because many teen-age girls also suffer from mild depression, said Moog. Yet they are bombarded by advertisers who present terribly optimistic images of their products--and of teen-agers. In a recent survey from the American Board of Family Practice, 55% of the teen-age girls said depression is a serious problem among teen-agers--but fewer than 39% of the boys agreed.

Sassaby, the company that makes the compact with the secret compartment, spends a lot of time trying to figure out what makes teen-age girls tick.

Company founder Leonie Mateer never turns down an opportunity to receive personal impressions about her products from teen-age girls--including a recent polling of a high-school marketing class at Rancho Bernardo High School.

“I wish I could kidnap every one of you and take you back to my office,” Mateer said, only partially in jest, to the 20 girls in the class. “It would make life a lot easier for me if I could pull you out whenever I need your opinions.”

Everything each of the 20 other girls in the classroom says or does is monitored by Mateer. She memorizes what they say. She asks them to write down, in detail, what they think of the two dozen products she will show them this day. And she painfully watches their faces to see how their eyes react the moment they see a new product.

“Looking at their faces tells me everything,” said Mateer.

There is almost nothing marketers won’t do to discover what teen-age girls are thinking. Many hire outside consultants who specialize in tapping into female teen-age trends. Some of these consultants study teen-agers in shopping malls, beaches or wherever they hang out.

But one specialist, who can’t seem to get enough information at the office, has some of the very same teen-age girls she studies at work come live with her, temporarily, in her Greenwich Village apartment.

“I can’t even watch a teen-ager brush her teeth without asking her why she uses the toothpaste she is using,” said Salzman, the 33-year-old president of BKG Youth.

The attitudes these girls express in surveys only confirm Salzman’s views. In April, 2,000 14- to 18-year-old girls were polled extensively by BKG Youth. The results: 87% of them said they “never” attended school while “wasted” from drinking too much alcohol or from using drugs. And fewer than 37% said they believed that a woman could be elected president.

Retail experts say teen-age girls are less interested in department stores and increasingly interested in specialty stores and boutiques.

“They think of department stores as places where their mothers go to buy wrinkle cream and where their grandmother’s go to sip tea,” said Alan G. Millstein, publisher of Fashion Network Report.

Many young girls prefer to do some research before they shop. Renata Vainer, also a student at Rancho Bernardo High, scans through magazines such as Seventeen and rips out the pages of anything she likes--then tacks them up on her wall.

That, in fact, is how many teen-age girls decide what they want. They rely on the advertising and articles in magazines such as Seventeen and Teen to tell them what they need. “Ads in a magazine they care about is viewed as something better than advertising,” said Cohen of Ally & Gargano. “It’s how they find out what’s cool.”

And it’s often how they shape their dreams.

Perhaps no one is more aware of that than Jay Cole, publisher of Teen magazine. The publication, which has a circulation of 1.2 million, is read by nearly one-third of all teen-age girls. It receives nearly 20,000 letters per month from its readers.

Kmart recently started to advertise heavily in Teen--and it even become a major sponsor of the Miss Teen-Age America contest. Now, when Kmart opens a new store, it scans through the Teen magazine subscription list and sends special postcard invitations subscribers.

“Brand identity is built at an early age,” said Cole. “Nearly half of all teens are brand loyal to products by the time they’re 15 years old.”