The student market in the UK is estimated to be worth £13 billion of spending power in a year. It is a market nocompany should ignore. Marketers are desperate to get students’ attention before they turn into high-earning graduates. Butstudents are hard to reach and cynical. How can brands target them?Youth market trends analyst Sean Pillot de Chenecey advises companies who hope to market to students. He says thereis no single strategy. Students organize their life on their mobile phones, respect brands that are ethical, but worry moreabout how they are going to pay off their debt than world peace. To get students’ attention, marketers must offer themsomething that adds to their lives. It isn’t enough to simply sponsor a music tour: they have to make the event happen. Forexample, Carling (a beer manufacturer) introduced live music at train station.Offering students help with their education and careers is an effective marketing method. The Guardian newspaper runscareers fairs and offers discounts on its products, such as Guardian Student, a 32-page newspaper.Red Bull, a successful energy drinks brand, uses what it calls “energy teams” on university campuses. The companyrecruits teams of students and gives them a Red Bull car, which has a fridge. The students offer samples and giveinformation about the product benefits. They do this on campus at sporting events and at times of the year when studentsmight need an energy boost. “It’s extremely important that it is a student doing this and not a company sales rep,” says thecompany’s consumer manager who runs the scheme. “You need to have an approach that doesn’t look like a sales pitch.”Having an insider on campus can help marketers understand student life. Youth marketing agency, Virgin D3, has adatabase of students who act as “field staff”. They ask them for help when planning an event at their university. Perhaps, bygetting ideas from the students themselves, companies can find ways to reach this difficult market.