Renewed Spotlight on Kids Marketing
Posted by Dave Lawrence on February 18, 2010
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Over the last few years kids marketing has received increasing attention from lobby groups, politicians and the media and as we build towards the general election it is clear that it will become a big hot potato as witnessed by David Cameron’s latest comments. Whilst his statement today is laced with headline-grabbing sound bites, much of what he says is actually well grounded common sense given that his central demand is that kids should not be exposed to brand marketing that causes ‘….inappropriate commercialisation and sexualisation too young.’
This philosophy is implicit in the ‘Constructive Kids Marketing’ proposition of The Value Engineers Kids practice, highlighting the need to responsibly cater to the needs of children whilst recognizing the necessity to earn and keep parental trust.
With kids marketing universally being lambasted by politicians however, there is a distinct danger that brands over-compensate and revert their marketing focus too far towards mums at the exclusion of children (who, it must be remembered, are still the primary consumers of child / family products and services). We highlight this balancing act as a brand pendulum and with our needs convergence model we can demonstrate that the needs of kids and their mums are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
It is also interesting to note that the parental blog responses to such political initiatives largely reflect a growing frustration with ’top down’ directives from government. Parents are growing tired of being preached to about how they should bring up their children and largely take a more balanced view of the situation, willing to accept that ‘Kids should be Kids’ and that they should be allowed to have a bit of fun, albeit it in moderation and as part of a balanced lifestyle.
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