Marketing to kids...

This morning, the kid was playing with Webkinz on the iMac. At one point, I glanced over and realized she was in fact surfing the new products and was watching a video about some sort of deluxe subscription service. My "dad" voice went on and I told her to turn it off or return to playing with the characters. She wondered why, of course, and I started in on an explanation of what was going on — that she was being sold products that she would then want me to buy. I've tackled these issues here before, but today's conversation came on the heels of the biggest lead-up to Christmas yet, or rather the first one where she's putting specific demands out that are coming from commercial influence.

Until recently, I kept a fairly tight cinch on the kinds of TV she could watch — pretty much locking the options down to Boomerang (which does not show commercials and recorded shows where she could skip the ads). And until she moved in with someone recently, her mom didn't have cable at all. At home, she has discovered other channels and begun to watch them when I'm not paying attention. And these channels are jam-packed with ads for all the latest toys every kid needs.

I thought about all this as I approached the Webkinz question this morning — and as I face a Christmas where she will be getting franchise-building things like American Girl and Nintendo DSi. Rather than shutting it all down and eliminating cable (at least not yet), it seemed like a good chance for a teaching moment. We sat in front of the computer, and I asked her why she thought the Webkinz site was showing her all the great products she could get to expand her collection. She said it was so we would go buy them — so far so good.

The next lesson was about need. I asked her why she "needed" the cute koala or yorkie toys, and she said she needed them so the animals she already had would have more friends. I asked her if she really "needed" the toys or just felt like she needed them and really just wanted them. We've discussed the difference between want and need in the past, so she aced this question. I went in for the kill.

The reason they make her "need" them, I explained, was because they know how to make kids want something so badly their parents get it for them. I added that we could get things we wanted when we can afford them, but I wanted her to understand that it really was just a way for the companies to sell more stuff.

Looking back and writing about it now, I wonder how best to keep approaching this lesson without being a thorough killjoy. It's not that I want to isolate her from every venal form of advertising and marketing to kids — I can't — but I do want her to understand when the shiny object they're trying to sell her might not really be all it's cracked up to be.

Crafting another generation of consumers

Thanks to Highlights for Children I’ve finally gotten the perfect opportunity to explain marketing to Buttercup.

See, yesterday, we got the latest round of marketing from them. This particular one is for a series of pubs about the fifty states. Before I even had a chance to intercept the thing, Buttercup had it in her hands, pulling the plastic off. There was a poster showing parts of the series. There was a sheet of stickers for the states — stickers being prime swag for the kid-set. There was a card assuring me about the fun and educational value of the series, and assuring me that I was under no obligation to buy anything. And last but far from least, there was the sweepstakes game.

The sweepstakes game is, of course, the prime driver here. There are six scratch-off spots. Scratch them off and find out if you’ve gotten: (a) the free book with one star, (b) the free bag with two stars, or (c) the free book and bag with three stars. As Buttercup started in on it, I grumbled that she would find three stars, of course. Why, she asked, and with a sigh, I told her that this is what marketing people do — we make the audience think they’ve gotten something special, even when everyone else who got the package also got three stars.

She didn’t care. She scratched them off and applied the three stars to the reply card, absolutely pleased that she’d gotten them. And of course she wanted to know whether we could send them in for the book and the bag.

I tried to explain how the process works, that we would send it in and pretty soon have things arrive that we would be expected to buy. She mentioned that we had gotten them last year, and I realized we were on the slippery slope again. Parental guilt was about to set in — if we got them, she might learn and that would be a good thing, but was the (small) added expense worth it — but it was bed time so I hoped it would pass.

No luck. I found her filling out the response card in the morning with her name and age. (Who knew that the words “Print Name” vs. “Signature” were a learning tool?) Her next question, though, was a good one for the lesson I wanted to teach. “Why are your name and our address already on here,” she asked. “Because they know we might buy it, so they’re selling it directly to us, sweetie. And making it really easy to send back to them.”

“Oh,” she said. “So can we still get it?”

I sighed, asked her to put it away for now, and eat her breakfast. Will guilt push me over into sending the card in? Probably. Do I feel like I got sucker-punched by classic, tried-and-true direct marketing techniques? Absolutely.

Does everything need to be redesigned?

I bought the game Sorry! for Anna for Christmas. It was a game I figured we could both enjoy, and so far my instinct proved right. One thing bothers me about the game, though: the redesign.

This was the game I remember growing up:



And this is the game as it is currently designed:




The older version certainly needed a little updating. The design showed it's age, but what Milton Bradley did was unconscionable. Whoever designed it threw every trick in the book at it.

Grunge design has been all the rage the past few years, and the trademark splatters are here. Big cartoonish design has made a comeback too; the big outlines and super-splashy "Bam," "Pow" stars speak to that. And don't forget about half-toning; some of that's thrown in for good measure. Then there's the odd turn to a retro, space-age feel with the circles and gradients and bubble effects with circle outlines thrown on top of them. The cherry on top of that particular sundae are all the extra arrows and line elements that come from the little techie elements that felt fresh ten years ago. And don't forget about the updated cool-retro typeface—the name of which escapes me now—on the cover, the requisite handwriting font to give it the fun marketing splash of a printed Post-It, and the crazy-cool type treatments on the game board. To top it all off, there are transparencies everywhere. After all, where would we be without transparencies in contemporary graphic design, right?

Oy.

It all adds up to a redesign that feels like every design cliché of the past five years puked all over the package. In the end, it went from dated-but-readable to so-busy-that-you-have-to-concentrate-just-to-figure-out-what-you're-looking-for. I'm tempted to blame design-by-committee, but in the end it feels more like design driven by marketing. I can almost see the brand and sales managers agreeing that it looks new, fresh, awesome while a designer sits in the studio counting all the layers in his Illustrator files.

more corporate silliness

Give David Adams credit for writing a gripping lede for his op-ed in today's Times:

Young smokers who begin their habit with nicotine-laden cigarettes need a cigarette that will not leave them to later fight the ravages of addiction.

So rather than try to get kids not to smoke in the first place, the companies will just encourage them to smoke cigarettes that aren't physically addictive. Never mind the fact that it's the psychological addiction of the habit, oral fixation, and social component that are actually harder to break. At least that was my experience. Besides, teenagers who want to get the "real" thing will find ways to get the "real" cigarettes.

Isn't this just another version of the candy cigarettes that were sold to us as children? These same candy cigarettes had labels that were close enough to the real thing that kids could develop brand identification through design and color, and we could act like adults.


[image pulled from Candy.org.]

Food Technologists?

I picked this up via Consumerist. I really have nothing to add, except that I get tired of our cultural obsession with outdoing nature. The more I read about people like Food Technologists, "scientists" who believe we can out-engineer nature and thrive on processing, the moree resolved I am to continue raising Banana to appreciate real food that is cooked at home and, to whatever extent possible, produced (not processed) by people not machines.

[vintage ad from Plan 59]

Stupid water

Apparently Aquafina has decided to admit that it is simply packaged tap water. I'd never noticed that the bottles were labeled PWS--Public Water Supply--and neither had many other people.

Thus continues one of the all-time ruses of consumer culture--bottled water. I've commented before on the absurdity of Deer Park's single-use "kid" bottles, but it's really the whole bottled water segment of the drink industry that blows my mind. And the fact that that segment represents $11B is even more mind-blowing.

Bottled water really seems like the snake oil of our contemporary culture. It may never have been marketed as directly better than tap water, but beverage companies have marketed the perception that water from a bottle is healthier. The reality, however, is that most tap water is not only safe, but better for you in some cases. Certainly, it is more economical and can be comfortably transported through faucets or refillable bottles.

What further disturbs me is the environmental impact. With the consumables come the trashables--tons of plastic bottles everywhere.

hype and craving, pt. 2

I played with an iPhone today, finally. One of my part-time staff has one. I shouldn't have done it. Now I want one. They really are that cool.

marketing through mad-libs

Our new place is at an odd edge of the Fan. The area mostly gentrified years ago, but walk over a block and you're on the ever-funky blocks on Broad. That said, we have some decent restaurants nearby, as well as one of the best diners in Richmond. Unfortunately, they had just closed when Banana and I went to get our post-painting lunch. Arby's, however, was open.

I'm not a big fan of any of the big fast food chains... but the Beef and Cheddar sandwich I had brought me back to life. Banana wasn't thrilled with her chicken, but the fries and Tropicana juice were favorites.

As unhealthy a lunch as this was, I wasn't prepared for how unhealthy the "prize" would be. A Mad-Libs book is what it was, and at first glance, it seemed far better than the movie-branded toys that come with most kids' meals.

Until we did our first "story."

It was a neat little fitness story about a figure-skating girl who wins the gold medal and jumps in her coach's arms. Hello, Bela Karolyi. Anyway, the story ended with the sentence "Plus, she's looking forward to ___verb ending in "ing"___ tonight at Arby's!"

For fuck's sake, how's that for trying to create subtle brand identification? It's not enough that parents end up taking their kids to these "restaurants," is it. No. We have to create life-long consumers. I've given up thinking that I'm being too cynical in seeing these efforts for what they are; I've been in the business too long. No, these companies want to create fat children addicted to food high in fat, sweeteners, and salt, and addicted to their brands.

And it's not new. Remember candy cigarettes?

Stupid Packaging 1

Every so often, I come across an prime example of wasteful, stupid packaging. This one really hits a sore spot for me... Let's create the ultimate, kid-friendly bottle of water--small and manageable, with a sport nozzle for a top, easily packaged in large quantities, and safe. How is it safe? By using a non-removable cap. This is of course for the most altruistic reasons--god forbid a child choke on a bottle top.

Why is this stupid? Why?

Because it creates a completely disposable product. Rather than being able to refill your water bottle as do many of us who practice the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra, this item must be thrown away. (If you dig into Deer Park's good neighbor statement, their corporate copywriters tell you they care about waste and sustainability. Bullshit!) It is a prime example of pure marketing and consumption. The companies have already created the need--bottled water is safer--and now they meet the ultimate, lazy parental demands for convenience.

Stupid.