Ashley Beach
ab026319@ohio.edu
Advertisers know that the best way to sell a product is to advertise to the youth. The know that children are willing to pester their parents to buy a product that they saw flash across the screen while watching Saturday morning cartoons. On the other hand, children are also more likely to develop brand loyalty because they have seen the product from a young age.
Television or streaming platforms have become most marketing team's go-to method of delivery for advertising to children. Common Sense Media found that billions of dollars are spent per year to advertise to pre-teens. It also found that teens were the most important demographic, but there is just as much emphasis applied to marketing to all ages of youth.
There is a saying in the marketing world, "from the cradle to the grave". It means that companies want to draw in consumers when they are at an impressionable age to trap them as customers for the rest of their lives. Companies will use characters that the children. are familiar with from movies or television to spark their interest in a product. Practices like these can be seen in fast food industry's kids meal toys and television characters on diapers.
Using cartoon characters is also how marketing companies get children to develop taste preferences. The $2 billion-per-year industry takes familiar faces like characters off of Sesame Street and other cartoons to entice children into wanting their product. Common Sense Media noted that one of the most famous uses of this practice is the Lucky Charms cereal commercials with the Leprechaun cartoon.
For older children, marketers play on their desire to engage. Whether it be through social media platforms or in-person, Generation Z has a constant need for stimulation. Marketers have recognized this and created immersive advertisements on both mobile games and streaming platforms.
Many advertisements now allow the consumer to select their desired experience from two to three different pathways. Streaming platform Hulu has been one of the pioneers in the effort.
Hulu allows users to have the "choose-your-adventure" option for advertisements that play before a selected show begins. Users also have to option to tailor their ad preferences by selecting what they would like to see. These options allow the viewer to engage more with a brand and link together their experiences and the product they viewed.
Marketing executives know that the easiest way to sell products is to market to children. They work hard to ensure that brand loyalty is established at birth. Children are often the target of new marketing strategies. The industry understands what works and what doesn't, and it helps them sell a product.
This was very informative when it comes to the method of advertising toward children. I was well aware of the concept of advertising items specifically designed for children such as toys, clothes or movies. However, I was very surprised to learn of the "from the cradle to the grave" saying but it makes a lot of sense. Even thinking about myself, there are items and brands I stick to now simply because I've been familiar with them since a child. This concept and the reasoning behind why it works almost seems a bit unethical to me. When trying to encourage that life-long loyalty, it's interesting to know that companies are specifically targeting naive and impressionable children at ages as young as three years old. This also raises the question of the dangers of this tactic, especially when considering that some of these items can be bad for you such as fast food or candy.
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