Brand Awareness in Children - Term Paper Example

Brand Awareness in Children Overview A brand has to carry a message into the marketplace. The process of creating brand awareness starts once a brandidentity is established. Whatever method adopted to create brand awareness, print/radio/TV/ advertising, or others, the purpose is to establish a conspicuous presence in the target market. Target Market is ultimate place for the brand to be established; and if the target is the child then the creators are aiming long in the future. Children are future citizens and thus any thing associated with them holds a great future value. Creation of brands with children as brand ambassadors is a process to build an unspecified future value of the brand, as successful brand building among children can- carry over to their adulthood. Creating brand awareness in children is a sensitive issue, as an advertiser influences the original thought process of the children, who can ethically react in either way. This put enormous pressure and social responsibility on marketers. Contents 1. Targeting children – a right approach 2. Determinants of Brand Awareness Audio visual impact of electronic media Pester Power of children Positive Peers Pressure 3. Positive impacts of Brand Awareness. 4. Other limiting and unethical effects. 5. Conclusion 6. Bibliography 7. References 1. Targeting children – a right approach Creating ‘Brand awareness in children’ is a business, a creative communication process, a social phenomenon, and a fundamental ingredient of free- enterprise system. Certain members of business community have misconception that children are simply fickle consumers, lack brand loyalty, do not act rationally, and move from one trend to another very swiftly. The reality is otherwise. Current generation of children is passing through a time of pervasive commercialism. With cash/credit cards and social independence at their disposal, children frequent shopping venues with more regularity. Perhaps today’s generation of children is the well-informed consumer group. The reason for this is that children find brand names everywhere. If a child watches TV then he/ she is exposed to brand names advertised during the commercials in between the shows. In schools kids hear from their schoolmates all about brand clothes, shoes etc. Children start recognizing brands at such an early stage of life that brand awareness in them begins around the age of two to three. It is observed that around age 2, most toddlers start asking for products by their names. One or two years later, they start evaluating products. For example, the child may start liking one brand of peanut butter (that immersed in his mind earlier) as compared to other brand of peanut butter (about which he did not earlier familiarized). These days marketing executives are insinuating brands into the fabric of children’s lives. They want ‘cradle to grave’ brand loyalty. By the times children reach their teens, they have been taught that material possession matter the most. The volume of advertising is growing so rapidly that it invades almost every area of children movements, may it be homes or schools. Children have to confront advertising most of the time. Taking advantage of such situations, the pioneers of advertising campaigns use innocent development process of children to create brand awareness. The question arises whether such exploitation of innocence of children is ethical. 2. Determinants of brand awareness: Electronic medium, pester power of children, and the positive peer pressure are major factors that need to be considered by every marketer in order to create successfully brand awareness in children. Also, it is because of these attributes marketers feel that awareness about the brand should be instilled in children at an early stage of their lives. An analysis of the effects of each of these attributes on children is as under: a) Audio and visual impact of electronic media: The main determinant of increasing brand awareness among children is video and audio impact of televisions, Internet, and radios. Electronic media is very effective in creating brand awareness in children. That’s why quite often children take up the role of brand ambassador in commercial TV advertisements. A child of say 5 to 6 years has nothing to do with cars but car manufacturer create such awareness in child that he/she recalls the specific make of car seen by him/her in a TV commercial where a toddler was enjoying ride with parents. This is not only a creation of awareness about the brand but a case of ‘direction contribution’ towards the marketing of the product. Over the years, the marketers have scaled up their efforts to reach children through the medium of television mainly because of the reach of the medium to almost every household and other environments that influence the children behaviors. As per Juliet Schor2 ‘in 1983, advertisers spent $100 million on television advertising to kids. Today, they pour roughly 150 times that amount into a variety of mediums that seeks to infiltrate every corner of children world’. Television influences innocent children immensely. The Amsterdam School of Communications, research (ASCoR) 3, in a study to investigate the development of young children brand awareness, and the relative influence of environmental factors (e.g. television, parents, peers) on brand awareness, showed certain amazing facts. About one hundred ninety six children were asked to choose right brand out of 12 brand logos visual options. Two to three years old children recalled one out of twelve visuals whereas they recognized eight out ten brands. The results attributed exposure to television as the main reason to brand awareness of such young children. The advertisers are bound to get attracted to TV commercial medium because of its sheer power of attracting the targeted group of children. The APA Task Force in a research4 has asserted that the average American child is exposed to an estimated 40,000 television commercials a year- over 100 a day. This is not a small thing. Every child is so much television addicted that his outdoor activities have almost come to a halt, unless those are part of a curriculum of his/her studies. Another electronic medium ‘Radio’ that was once a powerful medium has staged a comeback very recently. The result is that audio messages that are played with video commercials on TV are simultaneously relayed on radio to maintain the continuity of the momentum created by advertisers to impact children with brand awareness. Children are so much addicted to electronic media that they spent more time with media than in the classroom. According to Kaiser Family foundation5, youth are multitasking their way through a wide variety of electronic media daily, juggling iPods and instant messaging with TV and cell phones. In fact, they pack 8.5 hours of media exposure into 6.5 hours each day, seven days a week. This is such a huge contributory factor that the marketers will dare not to ignore. b) Pester power of children Kids are very important source of creating their own market by influencing parents. Parents these days are ready to buy more for children because of smaller family size. Purchasing power of the family remains comfortable because of dual earning capacities. Also children are also future customers for the marketer. Pester power is children’s ability to nag their parents to purchase products they would not purchase in normal course. Accordingly, marketers view children as forceful market creators. Marketers employ several strategies to target children and teens. Furthermore, parents are not powerful to counter the incredible amount of advertising flung at the children. Parents do not have resources to counteract the uninvited effect of advertising on children. Giant companies target children and not parents, because children are quickly becoming one of the most powerful buying markets. Why there are junk food commercials? The reason is that parents buy the stuff which children force them to buy. This may be an exploitation of children weaknesses but marketers defend this as a creative exercise in brand awareness process. Giant retailers and other big businesses catering children needs are daringly planting brand awareness in children, as they are sure that their objects (meaning children) are sure to create market for the brand merely on basis of their pester power. The process may not be ethical but marketers are deploying this with aplomb. Very recently ‘Wall-Mart’ has created a web site (with two elves named ‘Wally’ and ‘Marty’) that shows them various toys and products, and asks the kids whether or not they like the toys. If the kids reply in affirmative, the elves promise to plead kids’ case with their parents. Wall-mart then sends e-mails to parents and informs them about the wishes of their kids. Though certain section of community found this as an unconscionable marketing exercise but brand managers call it a process that “simply modernizes the traditional pen and paper wish-list making process”6 The influence of the children can be gauged from a news item, of VOX7- an online marketing magazine, that states, “ In April, Toyota begin paying to place its Scion on Whyville.net, an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8-15-years old kids. Toyota hope Whyvillians will do two things: influence their parents’ car purchases and grow up to buy Toyota themselves (via MediaBuyerPlanner). Ten days into the campaign, The New York Times reports, visitors to the site had used the word “Scion” in an online chats; more than 78000 times, using “clams,” the currency of Whyville, and the community meeting place “club Scion” was visited 33,741 times.” c) Positive Peers Pressure Branding agencies launch a product and build awareness. Positive peers pressure is powerful tool and brand agencies successfully use this tool for creating brand awareness among children mainly because of it’s under mentioned effectiveness: Brands reside in the minds of consumers and if consumers are children, the brand flourishes like any thing among peers. To take an example cell phones are one of the most sought after electronic devices among kids and teens. They offer an additional element of play in kids’ lives. A child will select only that model of cell phone that his friend possesses or a superior model to show one-upmanship. Creation of Brand awareness through peers is more effective as children are greatly influenced by peers as compared to parents. This has to a lot with the fact that children spend more time with their friends in schools and other places than with their parents. Children are independent after an age and at that stage, fellow students influence more on their behavior and life style than their parents do. Volkswagen of America Inc. and Scholastic Marketing partners( a division of Scholastic, Global Children’s media and publishing company) worked together to develops a car safety program, sending out curriculum kits to 14000 high schools language arts and social studies teachers, of grades nine through 12, in ten major U.S.cities. The kits provided teachers the tools needed to create informative lessons for their students who were then asked to create TV public service announcements. The goal was to use positive peer pressure to convince teens to buckle up8. Teens want to be identified with their peer group. Teens and tweens (children between the ages of 12 and 14) are attracted to the prestige they believe brand names provide them. The attraction to brand names develops in adolescent years because it’s a time when peer pressure dominates. The marketers manipulate this peer pressure encouraging teens to use materialistic values of brand names to define who they are and aren’t. Parents play a substantial role in choosing a child’s peer group, but ultimately children style their habits largely as per their friend in the group. Marketers for creating brand awareness in the group exploit this grey area of children’s lives. For them a child is so powerful that he not only forces parents to agree to his demands, but at the same time creates an aura of influence to mould his fellow students to act, behave, and socialize like him/her. 3. Positive impacts of Brand Awareness i) Children are tomorrow’s decision makers. Children developments from birth to adolescence contribute to their power of decision making, consumer knowledge and understanding. Beside this natural process, outside sources and avenues beyond school curriculum should be developed and made available to kids so as to enhance their powers of awareness, knowledge, forming opinions, and developing attitudes, values and behaviors. Creation of brand awareness, when used in right perspective, certainly provides impetus for developments of these attributes among children. ii) Children become crusader for eradication of social evils or problems like the overweight and obesity or problem of drugs, when those problems are addressed as part of creating brand awareness in children. Imagine a child stopping his/her parents from smoking because he viewed harmful effects of smoking on TV. iii) Some theorists believe that increased knowledge does not necessarily correlate with decreased susceptibility. It is believed that children remain aware of persuasive media messages since an early age. They know that an awareness of brand is being created through their participation for commercial or other known purposes. Parents and others provide them with adequate inputs about the nuances of commercialism. Accordingly creation of brand awareness among children is nurturing them for real commercial interactions in future. iv) It is believed that actions have intrinsic moral value. Actions are morally good or morally bad. This important ethical principle suggests that public relations practitioners are duty bound to act in accordance with moral law and not with personal inclination of profit maximization. This maxim suggests that particular factors within an organization can determine whether it takes an ethical approach when dealing with its publics. Depending on this basic law of humanity it can be safely asserted that brand awareness developers will never consciously instill unethical values among children in their pursuit to commercialism. 4. Other limiting and unethical effects Brand awareness in children may turn unethical because of its utter commercial approach. A few examples are provided hereunder: i) Many young girls turns insatiable consumers of the product when they have regular exposures to commercials promising beauty, popularity, peace of mind, self confidence, great relationships and other virtues. Following such commercials they not only destabilize their self determination but also self awareness and self esteem. They are encouraged to look outside themselves for comfort, values and directions; and they become easy prey to addictive behaviors and unrealistic images that advertisement promotes. The diet, tobacco and alcohol industries particularly target girls capitalizing on issues of body image, weight concerns and beauty ideals. This makes them most vulnerable section of the society. ii) Brand awareness (particularly in shape of TV commercials) has become the cause of parent-child conflict on parent rejecting children’s unnecessary demands. The Report of APA Task force on ‘Advertising and Children’ intensely commented that “An important side effect of the influence of advertising on children desire for products is parent- child conflict that emerges when refusal occur in response to children’s purchase- influence attempts9.” A rift in a household with young children is certainly going to spoil the peace of mind of parents; and also provide children an excuse to go haywire. iii) Children get bewitched by advertising and promotions that are designed to charm them and induce them to buy products of questionable quality and nutritional value despite parents’ resistance. This effect of brand awareness is unethical as well as immoral as it plays with the health of innocent children. iv) Marketers are dead bound to create markets for products using children pester power. On the other hand parents feel as if they are in competition with big companies who can spend millions on advertising a product. Parents are bound to be failures on both counts. Advertiser deliberately target children and fan the flames of ‘pester power’. The advertisers argue that parents should control their children, yet a sense of powerlessness comes through in parents’ attitude. This aspect of building brand awareness is highly undemocratic. v) It is not necessary that best of the products gets recognition through brand awareness among children. It is the best advertised product that comes to the fore, even though that might be qualitatively inferior. That means brand awareness process in children is a farce. This distorts the system of instilling brand awareness in children. The resources spent on advertising go waste. vi) ‘Brand awareness in children’ is a marketing tool. It can be as dangerous as it is powerful. If the advertisers attempt to affect the minds of children at a level lower than rationality, in order to get passed its self- protective barriers and comfort zones, then this tool destroys the basic ethical human virtues. 5. Conclusion The idea of creating ‘brand awareness in children’ is to increase the sale of products, services or ideas. These products, services or ideas are in fact collection of values, ethical and moral. Values have emotional as well as rational repercussions, and the effective marketers are very well acquainted with these repercussions. It is important to for marketers to realize that ‘brand awareness’ can and does have legitimate as well as illegitimate uses. These are the abuses of this technology by the unscrupulous, who are not content with genuine force of this advertising tool, that create the most of the problems. 6. Bibliography 1. Quart, A.(2003) Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers. Perseus, New York. 2. Susan Linn, Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood ( New York: The New Press) 3. American Psychological Association 2004 7. References: 1 Sarmana Mitra on strategy>> Pre Teens http://sramanamitra.com/consulting/segments-and-lifestyles/pre-teens/ 2 Jullet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (New York: Scribner, 2004), 21 3 Valkenburg Patti M. in a study, conducted by Amsterdam School of Communications, research (ASCoR) http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16963164 4American Psychological Association, “ Television Advertising Leads to Unhealthy Habits in Children, Says APA Task Force,” February 23, 2004, www.apa.org/releases/childrenads.html 5 Donald F. Roberts, Ulla G. Foehr, Victoria Rideout, Generation M: Media in the lives of 8- 18 year- olds, The Henry . Kaiser Family Foundation, www.kff.org/entmedia/7251.cfm 6 ‘Parents shocked at Wall-Mart’s on line wish list’, Sarah Schmidt News Service, Nov.26,2006 http://www.canada.com/topics/finance/story.html?id=4e0ccf72-2276-4574-b822-c4311b392f50&k=97945 7 ‘Toyota Targets Kids to influence Parents’ http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/06/14/toyota_targets_kids_to_influence_parents/ 8 ‘Volkswagen Announces – Positive Peer Pressure: Teens Try to Save Young Lives with Ads Stressing Seat Belt Safety’ http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-09-2004/0002247678&EDATE= 9 ‘Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children- Section: Psychological issues in the increasing commercialization of childhood.’ Submitted by Dale Kunkel PhD., Brian L. Wilcox, PhD. And others http://www.apa.org/releases/childrenads.pdf Read More