Kids and Branding

I am the father of two young boys, ages 1 and 2, and am continually amazed at how their brains are like little sponges, soaking up all content (good and bad) that comes their way. I’ve found that if I tell my 2 year old something, he rarely forgets it. That information is in his head for good. It’s funny, I could tell him something completely off the wall, even incorrect (not that I do this) and he would accept the information and even argue if someone challenged the validity of it. My wife and I are finding that it’s pretty much impossible to keep anything we talk about private with him nearby. Sometimes he’ll be playing in the other room and we’ll talk about him and he’ll make a comment at that moment or later on that tells us he hears everything we were saying.

When you think about this from a branding perspective, kids are bombarded daily with so many messages. My two year old is just to the point where he’ll see a commercial on tv, say “I want that,” THEN see that product in a store and recognize it. He points out every McDonald’s (or, as he says it, McDongal’s) restaurant we drive by and knows that’s where he gets the coveted happy meal. He’ll even see a Nike swoosh, mention the nike golf ball I gave to him several months ago and say, “Tiger Woods uses Nike golf balls”. Okay, I’m the guilty party on that one…

Here’s some stats on kids and commercialism from newdream.org:

• Advertising directed at children is estimated at over $15 billion annually ? about 2.5 times more than what it was in 1992.
• Over the past two decades, the degree to which marketers have scaled up efforts to reach children is staggering. In 1983, they spent $100 million on television advertising to kids. Today, they pour roughly 150 times that amount into a variety of mediums that seek to infiltrate every corner of children?s worlds.
• A task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) has recommended restrictions on advertising that targets children under the age of eight, based on research showing that children under this age are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased.

The entire article can be viewed here.

It’s a bit scary to think about how much impact marketing has/can have on kids. It can affect their attitude, whether or not they’re accepted by their peers, and their self-esteem. I’m certainly more aware of the techniques being used now that I have kids of my own. And “McDongal’s” is getting a lot more of my money too!