Children 's Products : Child Target Marketing

No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products.

In today’s media obsessed society, youth is greatly influenced by advertising. For example, Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technologies is how they ,“Online games like Webkinz show ads on the site draw youth to buy the product or just to look at it for ‘money’”. Because this tactic works, the ads are an excellent at make youth to talk about this and be annoyed. In Facts about Marketing to Children, it says, “Children pack 8.5 hours of media a day’, is what the Facts about Marketing to Children says.” Because children are on the media so much it is easy for marketers to advertise and get children to buy the product. “ Anne Lappe says that when her daughter grows up, and goes to a movie, the character might have a soda or fast food.”

Many people believe that everything is black and white, especially when it comes to advertisements. What many don’t understand is that everything has an underlining meaning. Every advertisement has been thought out thoroughly to catch the attention of the consumers it is aiming towards. Advertisements aiming towards children has definitely been a topic that many people can’t seem to wrap their mind around. It’s been a topic that many have exposed because of the way marketers are willing to manipulate children in ways that only benefit their own. This whole issue began after the progression of marketing to children during the late 70s and early 80s with the advertisers’ intentions of making children lifelong consumers of products.

The kind of content that will motivate the first audience persona which is people looking to purchase a vehicle is information about how easy and stress free it is to find the their dream car on CarMax. Second information about how there is a team of people ready to ask any questions they have about their product. Third is to be a credible website to find nice safe cars. The reason for letting people know how easy it is to use CarMax is because when people are looking for a car they have no idea where to go or look. If they let people know that it is five clicks to find your dream car they would be compelled to check it out. They could make a slogan saying “Only 5 click Away From Your Dream Car”. They would think that it would not hurt to check it out. A reason for having a credible website and letting people know is that the audience will be looking at every new and used car dealership there are. CarMax does an excellent in letting people know they are a credible website because they have listed all their products on AutoTrader.com and Car.com. These are two website that the audience will also check

On this site it is a list of the eleven best car dealerships. This audience would influence CarMax’s content marketing because they would be able to target consumers who are lost and do not know where to go. Once they are directed towards the CarMax website they will see that the company makes in as easy as possible

Throughout the decades, marketing to kids has been becoming very intensive. There are several reasons to back up this statement. Marketers infiltrate kids lives, and advertisers use personalized advertisements to a child while using technology.

Finally, this paper gives recommendations on the best way for these car brands to proceed on social media. It was clear that work needed to be done on each of the different social media platforms. Overall recommendations include posting more of a variety of posts because these brands tend to focus on a single vehicle on their social media. Variety helps cater to more than just one customer and will help gain followers. Functional brand posts work the best for engagement. When looking at what these companies are posting about, the posts about the functional ability of these vehicles received the most engagement. These four vehicles, Civic, Focus, Elantra, and Altima, are very fuel-efficient and have high safety ratings. This is an advantage for them and should be posted about to gain market share. In some cases it is better for these

Marketers understand that no child is too young to be targeted by television; many of these programs are linked directly to commercial products. For example, Burger King then McDonald 's sponsored the public television show "Teletubbies" (show for toddlers). McDonald 's distributed toys of the four characters in their happy meals. It is estimated that advertising for children has now reached over $1 billion. The most common advertised foods seen are not surprisingly low in nutritional value; products such as, presweetened breakfast cereals, candy, fast food, sodas, cookies, and chips. Its safes to say the money isn 't being spent on advertising of fruits, vegetables, bread, or fish.

Through Strategic: CTA Web Banners, Red Zone Ads 4 WI-FI, Service to Sales, Customer Retention System, Direct Mail and Situational Marketing Platforms that appeal to car buyers on a personal level. We're able to capture and deliver five times as many sales leads then Capital one, Black book, Kelly blue book and Auto Trader combined.

In 2012 it was estimated that children spent over two hundred and eleven billion dollars because of ads. Advertisers like to target towards children because they know that children 8-10 are more vulnerable and want anything they see on tv so it's safe to say advertisers lead kids to make poor choices. Advertisers make over half a billion dollars a year, 50% of that is from targeting to children. Not only do ads lead kids to make poor choices , but it could lead to: injury or obesity.

Advertising is nothing new, but with advancements in technology advertising has become much more extreme especially for the younger generation. In the article “Internet Food Marketing Strategies Aimed at Children and Adolescents” discusses all the ways in which advertising is ubiquitous among children:

Children represent a large consumer power to marketers and advertisers. Firstly, because of the amount of money children spend themselves. Secondly, because of the influence they have on parents spending. Thirdly, because of their buying potential, so when they grow up they will become permanent consumers. The last reason is that they can easily be lured by advertisements. Buying and spending parents` money on sweets, food, drinks, video and electronic products, toys, games, movies, sports, clothes and shoes children bring big profits to companies. The reason for targeting advertising is huge income, brought to companies. According to Goodman (1999) children advertisement industry represents in more than $250 billion/year profits to marketers, and has approximately 900 000 brands to sell.

I personaly dont watch that much T.V., but as a child I watched alot. I remeber when I was a kid and a seen a new toy I wanted it more than anything. Now that I have grown up I do not fall into the temptations of ads no more, but I was vuluerable as a child and that is why I feel like there shouldnt be ads that target childern.

As noted in “Facts about Marketing to Children” from The Center for the New American Dream, in 1983, prior to the federal deregulation of marketing in media, advertisers spent $100 million on television ads targeting children. In contrast, by 2006, 22 years after deregulation, that amount had grown to $40 billion. The documentary Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Kids notes that that is an 852% increase. Companies employ professional researchers and child psychologists to help create their marketing strategies. Some of these strategies include 360-degree marketing campaigns that bury kids in what Michael Rich, MD calls a “media blitz” of over 3000 images per day. Consuming Kids describes the various blitzes and notes how they are all part of watching television ads, listening to radio, and playing video games where products are placed directly in a game. The internet is the newest advertising frontier and even uses the strategy of employing children to market to other unsuspecting children at sleep- overs and during school. The USA TODAY article also describes how 77kids by American Eagle and Webkinz encourage students to download their own image and see themselves as glamorous rock stars, in the products, or “sharing” with friends

If children are the future, then why are they constantly being infected with marketing tactics? Marketing to children has a multitude of negative impacts, mainly impacting the health of a child. Mental health is probably the biggest one and marketing greatly impacts a child from childhood to adulthood. Other than mental health, the physical health of a child is also impacted from the harmful tactics of marketing. The companies who do this marketing are both harming the physical and mental health of a person but there are a few ways to lower the risk of infecting a child with this mediated disease, it is going to require some effort, however. Overall, marketing to children is a social problem that is harmful to the development of a child.