Marketing to Kids Online: You can’t steal candy from the baby
I recently discussed how children became consumers and what could be learned from the Build-A-Bear phenomenon, and as promised I am going to apply this marketing to children online. Over the next week I will be posting on this topic.
First, it should be mentioned that there are guidelines concerned with advertising to children offline and online in the United States. The Children’s Advertising Review Unit is a self-regulatory program and these are their core principles:
1. Advertisers have special responsibilities when advertising to children or collecting data from children online. They should take into account the limited knowledge, experience, sophistication and maturity of the audience to which the message is directed. They should recognize that younger children have a limited capacity to evaluate the credibility of information, may not understand the persuasive intent of advertising, and may not even understand that they are being subject to advertising.
2. Advertising should be neither deceptive nor unfair, as these terms are applied under the Federal Trade Commission Act, to the children to whom it is directed.
3. Advertisers should have adequate substantiation for objective advertising claims, as those claims are reasonably interpreted by the children to whom they are directed.
4. Advertising should not stimulate children’s unreasonable expectations about product quality or performance.
5. Products and content inappropriate for children should not be advertised directly to them.
6. Advertisers should avoid social stereotyping and appeals to prejudice, and are encouraged to incorporate minority and other groups in advertisements and to present positive role models whenever possible.
7. Advertisers are encouraged to capitalize on the potential of advertising to serve an educational role and influence positive personal qualities and behaviors in children, e.g., being honest, and respectful of others, taking safety precautions, engaging in physical activity.
8. Although there are many influences that affect a child’s personal and social
development, it remains the prime responsibility of the parents to provide guidance for children. Advertisers should contribute to this parent-child relationship in a constructive manner.
You can read the here [PDF].
I think it is important, when advertising to children to consider that they are still children, and therefore one must be more conscious of what is being said and what is being promoted. While you want to make money and market your site, you still don’t want to be evil and “steal candy from a baby”.
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Posted: August 6th, 2007.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from
Time: August 6, 2007, 10:57 am
Great topic, Danielle. Kid advertising has been a crazy thing here in the U.S. for decades. The FCC used to have a rule that children’s broadcasting could not be based on a toy. Mattel had tried making a cartoon in the late ’60s based on Hot Wheels toy cars, but the FCC cracked down on them and passed that law. Flash forward to the 1980s with Ronald Reagan as President, and he appointed a new FCC chair who reversed the ruling. This was quickly followed by a new carton called “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” which essentially was a half-hour commercial for the new boy’s action figure line from Mattel that went on to sell 55 million He-Man figures alone in 1984. Crazy. So now, cartoons and commercials are fairly intertwined.
Sorry for the little bit of “geek out” there. I’ve got way too much toy knowledge…
But in terms of your post about the guidelines, it’s really scary how much information some websites will collect from kids either through ads or just plain old registration.
Comment from
Time: August 6, 2007, 11:05 am
i totally agree the biggest consumers are children they hv soo much power of the adults its hard to believe!! i think most commercials just want to be appealing for children but they just dont care about the message they r passing on!! most of the time they give kids bad examples!! :D
Comment from Danielle
Time: August 6, 2007, 11:25 am
@Andrew - Great info! Thanks for sharing! (I was a big fan of He-Man’s bosomy friend She-Ra) Many bigger advertisers take these guidelines into account, but it seems that online people have a tendency to throw caution to the wind and not care as much about being principled and “good” and all that… It is important to remember that when online you are still dealing with people, and in some case you are still dealing with children. While yes marketing is important, you don’t want to be “that guy” who is taking advantage of kids and manipulating for cash. After all, these are the people that will someday run the nursing homes that we will all live in. :)
@confessing7girl - Well, I did not want people to think I was evil by discussing marketing to kids - so I wanted to let them be aware of the guidelines and issues surrounding advertising to children.</p>
Comment from
Time: August 6, 2007, 4:13 pm
Great post.
I think the advertising for children is for the parents as well, `cause the children does not have the money for buy the candies, the toys, etc.
So I learned that when I have to do some kind of announcement or advertisement it`s for 2 persons at the same time. First the kid, second his/her parents, in that order. The colors, the big images, the animations the music it`s for the kids, the text like the age restriction, the price, etc, is for the parents.
I had a stepchild and I spent a lot of money buying toys for him, mostly robots and cars, I noticed that he always see the logo, the character and those “pumping eye” elements of the box or the TV commercial, etc, and the rest of the announcement like the text and specs are “invisible” for him.
And that “invisible part of the announcement” for the kids it`s the most important thing of the whole campaign `cause it defines the purchase ;)
Comment from
Time: August 6, 2007, 7:04 pm
Danielle honestly this the thing that attracts me to your blog. Your ideas have the soft feeling unlike those of most boys and men and you have an awesome way of communicating.
Children Advertising or Kid Advertising does seem an interesting issue in countries like UK and US but here in Pakistan we don’t even have a proper advertising market for the teen and middle-aged generation let alone target your products to childs and kids.
Thats sad :(
Comment from Danielle
Time: August 6, 2007, 7:19 pm
@Hernan - Well, honestly these days children have a say in even some of the bigger purchases parents make (ie. cars), and even car commercials target children.
@DJ Flush - How nice of you to say! I guess I sort of missed out on the macho train that went by… :D I think that the “consumerisation” of childhood is something that occurred mainly in North America. I don’t know how much better off we are because of it… I don’t know if 12 year olds need cellphones personally.. but I get what you are saying about it being sad though. :)
Comment from
Time: August 7, 2007, 3:34 am
Advertising is an industry with tough rules, as is for example publishing industry. Lot of laws and rules. carefully read it, it takes to
- don`t do it at all, anything is somehow ilegal
- everything is legal until proven ilegal - what actually matters is the cash I can pay to be legal even after oriven ilegal.
Well, as general rule (pointed out from quoted rules in your post) is that a child shouldn`t be cheated-foolished.
Yet, I still see lot of cartoons well known and popular characters on children product`s cover or on commercials.
Finaly, as stated in those rules, “it remains the prime responsibility of the parents to provide guidance ..”
Very intersting subject, Danielle. I feel sorry I haven`t discover you long a go, yet I hope you`ll keep blogging on for at least 25-30 years from now, so I would enjoy reading you this time.
Comment from
Time: August 7, 2007, 5:42 pm
Hi Danielle,
Great and interesting topic. I wish they would stop making commercials telling my kids how wonderful fruit loops and other junk is sooo yummy! If I bring my kids grocery shopping with me it’s a battle between what they’ve seen on commercials and what’s actually good for them.
Comment from Danielle
Time: August 7, 2007, 6:26 pm
@Valentin - I absolutely agree with your statement that it is up to the parents to provide guidance. In a perfect world, no one would try to pull the wool over the eyes of kids, but it’s not a perfect world and parents need to realize this.
@Christy - Yeah - it’s just really hard to make All-Bran sound fun though! When I was a kid, I used to get a small box of sweet cereal for weekends… but the rest of the time I had to eat healthy stuff. This was a good compromise. Of course I would pick the most sugary cereal I could find (usually Cinnamon Toast Crunch).
Comment from
Time: August 9, 2007, 6:43 am
Good post Daniel. Advertising towards kids is way out of hand these days. Psychologically, very young children cannot differentiate between a commercial and reality…at all, and the companies play that to their advantage…many times unethically.
McDonal’s itself was found guilty of targeting their advertising specifically at children in an attempt to harness the “pester power” factor. This is covered in McLibel. It’s an awesome documentary about the McDonald’s Restaurants v Morris & Steel case. Highly recommended if you’re an information sponge like me.
There’s also an interesting study being done right now (I can’t recall by whom) where mother’s are to keep a record of every single time their kids ask them to buy something. So far, the results are pretty disturbing.
But it’s not surprising. On TV alone the average child sees around 40,000 commercials per year. I see a lot of those commercials, and what they’re pumping into their little brains is pretty scary. It’s no wonder we have a lot of the social issues we have today.
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