Marketing to childern

Targeting to kids is important to marketers because they have their own purchasing power, they influence their parents' buying decisions and they are the future consumers. Advertisers spend a huge amount of money to target children

Parents today are willing to buy more for their kids because trends such as smaller family size, dual incomes and postponing children until later in life mean that families have more disposable income. As well, guilt can play a role in spending decisions as time-stressed parents substitute material goods for time spent with their kids.

Here are some of the strategies marketers employ to target children and teens:

Pester Power is defined as the process in which marketers aim for children  to pester their parents in to purchasing items that they may not buy. Marketing to children is all about creating pester power, because advertisers know what a powerful force it can be. These days’ kids have more control in the decision making within the family than previous times. According to the 2001 marketing industry book Kidfluence, pestering or nagging can be divided into two categories—"persistence" and "importance." Persistence nagging (a plea, that is repeated over and over again) is not as effective as the more sophisticated "importance nagging." This method appeals to parents' desire to provide the best for their children, and plays on any guilt they may have about not having enough time for their kids.

This is a clip of an example of the kids influence and what extent of the pester power would go to get what they want.

To effectively market to children, advertisers need to know what makes kids tick. With the help of well-paid researchers and psychologists, advertisers now have access to in-depth knowledge about children's developmental, emotional and social needs at different ages. Using research that analyzes children's behaviour, fantasy lives, art work, even their dreams, companies are able to craft sophisticated marketing strategies to reach young people.

Many companies are using "buzz marketing" a word of mouth" method. The idea is to find the coolest kids in a community and have them use or wear your product in order to create a buzz around it. Buzz, this is a way of using trendsetters to market for companies and get it started.

Marketers also create brand recognition in a very young children, as brand marketing overtime into the future they will recognise the brand

Corporations realize the power of the school environment for promoting their name and products and schools are requiring the extra funding and material and therefore accepting it. Marketers are doing this in a number of ways, including:

·         Supplying schools with technology in exchange for high company visibility.

·         Exclusive deals with fast food or soft drink companies to offer their products in a school or district.

·         Advertising posted in classrooms, school buses, on computers, etc. in exchange for funds.

The internet has become a way for marketers to target children. A recent study carried out by Intuitive Media for New Media Age magazine interviewed more than 2,800 primary school children and found that 43% of them said they would buy or eat more of a food brand because they have seen it online or played a game about it. What is more, over 20% of them go online to find out about their favourite foods and snacks.

Sources: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jul/31/newmedia.advertising

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/marketing/marketers_target_kids.cfm