Marketing to teens, tweens & toddlers

(Slightly Brit-centric, but the issues covered are pretty universal.)

Half of all children aged four don't know their own name - but two thirds of three-year-olds can recognise the McDonald's golden arches. Jonathan Freedland investigates the multi-million-pound industry intent on turning teenagers and toddlers alike into avaricious consumers

"B-Daman warriors. Rapid fire! Serious Accuracy! Awesome firepower! Be da man - with B-Daman!" "My scene goes Hollywood. It's so hot - and so are we!" "Get new Sticker-mania. It's amazingly cool!"If you have trouble recognising those product names, or even understanding the words, don't worry. They're not meant for you. They are, instead, examples of an industry worth at least £70m every year: advertising aimed directly at children. The value of indirect marketing - ads that are not made expressly for kids but are seen by them anyway - runs into the hundreds of millions. The result is that today's average British child is familiar with up to 400 brand names by the time they reach the age of 10. Researchers report that our children are more likely to recognise Ronald McDonald and the Nike swoosh than Jesus. One study found that 69% of all three-year-olds could identify the McDonald's golden arches - while half of all four-year-olds did not know their own name.

Parents have fretted about this for years. They know what it is to battle in the supermarket aisles with children professionally trained in the art of pester power. Those on low incomes are hit especially hard, nagged by kids desperate for gadgets or clothes they have seen on TV but which their parents cannot afford. The NHS reports rising incidence of mental illness among the young, with anxiety and depression linked to the pressure to buy, to own, to consume. The data shows today's children are unhappier than any generation of the postwar era.

(...)

Parents of sick kids have reported McDonald's workers targeting children's wards of hospitals, handing out balloons and toys, but also leaflets promoting their own product. Others have noticed the food giants finding new ways to sell their wares, bypassing TV to reach directly into children's lives. The campaign group the Food Commission has singled out a Cheerios counting book that encourages toddlers to put cereal pieces in the slots on the page and Nestlé's offer of a customised story, featuring your child's name printed in a Milkybar Kid adventure. Advertisers love the idea of breaking into what psychologists call "the educable moment" - that precious second when a child is reading or playing and so at their most receptive.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1600020,00.html

On what planet?

placing all of the small kid related candy and sweets near, and about top-of-the-shopping-basket-high, the checkout counter. Where, while waiting in line the little darlings can while and snivel about not having the gooey-sweet morsels that an adult would throw up over.

Marketing, marketing and more marketing... Is it wrong??

In my opinion, yes.

It seems to me that a majority of parents, will give in to the whining and sometimes more aggressive manner of "gimme, gimme, gimme", than to stand their ground for what they, the parent, knows is best for the child.

And the advertisers and manufacturers know it.

Unless you're an incredibly weak and ineffective parent, what the world of marketing does need not have any impact on your kids' lives.

Parents are better at brainwashing, too. The other day at the supermarket, my kids were examing product labels for the evil High Fructose Corn Syrup. It almost frightened me.

McDonald's workers going into hospitals is totally over the line, though. Making sick kids associate McDonald's with happiness and comfort is really just evil.

very much to my dismay... There is alarming growth in ineffectual parenting lately.

If you doubt it, just find out how many kids are in the local behavioral health facilities... and I am not speaking about kids with chemical imbalances that cause ADHD and the like... I am speaking about those with parents that just plain do not care about their kids...

It's sad...