‘Baiting outrage’ and other social media marketing tactics

The way I see it, ABC News and the Today Show just ran a ten-minute infomercial for Abercrombie & Fitch. The lure? The “oversexualized” push up padded bikini on Abercrombie Kids. Mommy bloggers and social media parenting experts all took the bait and jumped right into the outrage feeding frenzy. It’s bad for girls self esteem. Who needs padding when you are 8? The only reason for a push up anything is to push sexuality.

Okay, okay, we get it.

Actually, we all got it a long time ago, as in the 1970s, which is why I think this whole outrage thing is kinda silly. Even my 8 year-old daughter was rolling her eyes at the experts on the Today Show this morning. “Bad for girls? Huh? It’s just a boring striped bathing suit.” And then... “Mommy, what does ‘oversexualization’ mean?”

Thank you, Meredith Vieira, for today’s word of the day!

Lucky for Abercrombie & Fitch, they’re back in the news as being an “edgy” brand targeting youth, which is exactly where they want to be. The moms who ban Barbies and Bratz dolls aren’t shopping there anyway, so for them, this latest stunt amounts to a whole lotta free publicity and traffic. I can just hear the A & F execs in their closed-door meetings... "oh yeah, nice boost in traffic... all we had to do is name the product 'push up' and then change it to something boring like 'triangle' and the hub-bub will be forgotten by tomorrow... meanwhile, sales are great."

Baiting outrage, a term coined by Amy Jussel, media literacy expert and founder/executive director of ShapingYouth.org, seems to be the new normal for going viral. Amy pointed me to a new Tufts study on media and incivility, further proof that the headlines just keep getting worse and worse even while the hard data on news and trends often proves otherwise.

Here’s the problem. Traditional marketing doesn’t really work anymore and we’re all getting a little tired of social media and blogging and e-mail marketing, with all of those #giveaways we can #win and #promo codes that are about to expire and #exclusive offers that aren’t really exclusive at all. Every marketer is clamoring for attention so it’s not surprising that “padded push up bikini for 7 year-olds” was able to cut through the clutter and actually grab out attention. Only… you’re smarter than that and you’re not going to fall for it next time. Right? Right.

I was in a client meeting this morning discussing – you guessed it – an upcoming marketing campaign for a product targeted to children and one of the partners mentioned in an aside, “You know... my husband is one of those tech people who’s always a year or two ahead of the trends. And guess what he just did? He erased his online profile. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare… poof! Gone.”

In a virtual world full of media frenzy – one that doesn’t necessarily mirror the real world we actually live in – erasing one’s frenzied social media presence has a lot of appeal.

So, marketers, how will you reach your customers then?

The Key to Kids and Healthy Products? Collaborate with a Licensed Character

Surely it will come as no surprise that a recent study found that children’s consumption goes hand in hand with effective merchandising, licensing and marketing (Yale University: Licensed Characters on Food Packaging Affect Kids’ Taste Preference, Snack Selections).

But onions? Sure enough, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article about Shrek’s recent promotion with Vidalia onions.

The anecdote about the three year-old who threw a fit until his mother dropped a bag full of onions into her shopping cart pretty much sums it up. What parent hasn’t been there before? Not with the onions, I mean. The toddler pitching a fit in the grocery store over a licensed character.

This same mom went home with her onions, chopped them up into a casserole and the tot gulped them down. “It was like a toy in a cereal box,” said the mom.

Now, I’m not advocating marketing to children merely for the sake of marketing, but when it comes to stuff that is “good” for kids but not always an easy sell (healthy foods, educational products, etc.) the challenge is always this: how can you make it as fun and rewarding as a toy inside a cereal box? Sure, of course you can partner with a box office hit like Shrek and sit back and watch your sales rise… or you could do something even more fun and engaging.

If Shrek can sell onions to kids, what can you do for your brand?

Marketing to girls: pink stinks. Really?

“You need to buy me a new jacket.”
“Why? It still fits you. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s too girly.”

Actual conversation between my daughter and me last week.

She’s 7.

And then there’s this Time magazine article Not So Pretty in Pink: Are Girls' Toys Too Girly? about two London moms who recently launched the advocacy group Pinkstinks, which they hope will "spark a shift in a popular culture that they say puts girls "into a pretty little box" from birth, offering them toys that emphasize the importance of looking good and being feminine, while the boys are allowed to go exploring and get dirty."

Which is fine… I suppose, if it weren’t such a tired feminist argument that really has nothing to do with consumer marketing, gender inequality or unfair stereotypes.

Here’s the thing. The reason why all the girl clothes and toys are pink and purple and princess-y is not because the toy and fashion industries are sexist. It’s because that’s what sells. And it’s what the girls want… up until about age 6 or 7. And then it changes. Just go into any major retailer or department store and look at the different sections. Toddler/preschool clothing and toys are extremely segmented by stereotypical gender colors and genres, but merchandise for older kids (ages 7 and up) is not. It's not a conspiracy. It's just plain old market economics.

However, as a feminist and women's college graduate I do know that there are plenty of parents out there who are fed up with the mass merchandise and uninspired consumer products targeting our young children. They want products that are fresh, new and different. As a mother to a daughter who up until a year ago would only wear pink, I also know that it's frustrating to buy clothes or toys that simply don't get used.

The London moms (mums) behind the Pinkstinks campaign have launched a sister website where kids can participate in the discussion.

What do you think?

TV viewing is alive and well

In case you were wondering if kids were watching less TV now that we have so many new and exciting new media options, including online games, virtual worlds, consoles, iPods –not to mention the media blitz surrounding the links between TV watching and childhood obesity— in fact, TV watching is actually on the rise. At an eight-year high, according to a new Nielsen study released yesterday.

The report states that children ages 2-5 spend an average of 32+ hours a week in front of the TV. Children ages 6-11 watch about 28 hours per week. TV watching is now defined as watching what is currently on TV, watching playback programming via DVR, DVDs and videos.

As the Nielsen report states, "While 97% of kids’ viewing is through live TV, younger kids spend more time than the older group viewing via DVR, DVD and, to a lesser extent, VCR. Four percent of kids aged 2-5 watch via those devices on average across total day compared to 2.3% for those aged 6-11. Their considerable use of these devices at a young age points to them being able to adopt new devices comfortably as they grow up."


Also of note, especially for you media literacy types: younger children watch more commercials than the older kids. Is anyone surprised?

Educating Kids (and Moms) About Advertising

Holy government intervention, Batman! Two things happened this week that caused me to smile:

1.The FTC finally issued a crackdown on mommy bloggers who write product endorsements without disclosing their relationships with those products (i.e. they got the products for free or—even better—they are getting paid to write the review) and
2. The FTC is also reviewing standards and practices around advertising to kids.

As David Vladeck, the new director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection is quoted in this week's MediaPost article "The distinction between ads and other content is often blurred to the point that even older kids may not get when they are being pitched," he said. "The goals are to teach kids to be aware of ads, analyze and understand them, and the benefits of being an informed consumer."

The FTC actions include a new educational campaign aimed at tweens next year that will teach kids how to recognize and analyze advertising.

That's all fine and good, but what about the advertisers? As Meredith from YPulse points out in her update from this week's CARU conference, the discussions centered around "reconciling the unilateral marketing standards of the past with the ubiquitous connectivity and multiple platforms of the new media landscape. As the regulatory processes continue to be fine tuned and consumers of all ages become more active players (whether as Facebook fans, content creators, bloggers, etc.), we see a shift from messaging as a one-way broadcast to an ongoing dialogue with youth."

It's an interesting issue and one that is going to be mighty tough to regulate when the lines between advertising, editorial, social media, wireless communications and even mommy’s blog are blurred.

Marketers love tweens and moms right now. And why wouldn't they? Collectively tweens have a spending power of over $30 billion and they influence about 70% of household purchases. And their mothers, who influence 85 percent of their household purchases, collectively spend about $2.1 trillion per year.

Women and children of America, unite! The advertising issue is one that by and large, will be solved by you. Education begins at home.

What PBS can teach us about educational children’s media

PBS Kids recently earned the distinction as the #1 educational children’s media brand, according to a new GFK Roper survey that polled over 1,000 U.S. adults in April, asking questions about PBS Kids as compared to Leapfrog, Nick, Jr., Playhouse Disney, Noggin, Discovery Kids, National Geographic Kids, KOL (a.k.a AOL for Kids) and YahooKids, among others.

Surprise? Not to those who already know and love all things PBS Kids, including popular programs/brands such as Sesame Street, Word World, Super Why and Cyberchase.

According to the study, “PBS KIDS excels at addressing key curriculum areas and children’s cognitive and social/emotional developmental needs. Respondents concurred that PBS succeeds in delivering important topics to young viewers with reading and literacy (80%) ranking as the topic that PBS speaks to best. Other developmental areas that follow literacy include the arts (75%), science/technology/engineering/math (74%), social/emotional development (74%), healthy living (73%), and the environment (71%).”

Can any other educational children's brands be held to such a high standard? Apparently not. Truth be told, the FCC is partially to blame. The Children's Television Act (CTA) enacted by Congress in 1990, requires broadcasters to provide at least three hours a week of educational/informational (E/I) programming for kids between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. But there's no definition of what "educational" actually means. Therefore, it's no big surprise that a 2008 Annenberg study found that merely 25% of E/I shows were of "minimal educational value." Worse, nearly 70% of the shows aimed at school-age kids contained violence and harsh language.

But this blog isn't aimed at parents who have ample reason to turn off their television sets forever. It's targeted at you (and me): the children's media producer, the brand marketer, the content creator, the television executive, the toy licensor; those of us who fuel the amazing machine that churns out kids media and the related "stuff" that goes along with it. You and I both know that a lot of it is pure crap. And that it contains absolutely no educational value whatsoever.

So now what? I say take a few pointers from PBS Kids. Here are a few:

1. Establish a curriculum. Don't know how to do this? Hire a curriculum consultant! There are plenty of them out there and they would love to work with you.
2. Pick a subject area (or two) and stick with it - i.e. math/science, social/emotional, language development. Keep it simple, keep it fun.
3. Form an educational advisory board (yes, with real educators and child development specialists) to review scripts, storyboards, even licensing deals - to ensure that everything is on brand and that the content meets the highest standards possible.
4. Determine how you will measure the success and educational outcomes of your children's media property (hint: your curriculum consultant and/or educational advisory board can help you do this).
5. Get an independent, ideally educationally-based organization to conduct a research study or brand audit. For example, a Georgetown University study, "Educational TV: 30 Years of Sesame Street Research" found that the children who had watched more Sesame Street as young children had higher school performance as adolescents, as measured by grades in English, math, science and overall GPA.

Can your children's media brand pass the test?

Marketing to Kids: Our favorite titles

“The average 10-year-old has memorized about 400 brands, the average kindergartner can identify some 300 logos and from as early as age two kids are "bonded to brands." Some may call it brainwashing, others say it's genius; regardless of how you see it, the approach is the same: target young kids directly and consistently, appeal to them and not the adults in their lives and get your product name in their heads from as early an age as possible.” --- Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture

According to recent research “even in these tough economic times, tweens wield $43 billion in spending power annually, and influence the spending of billions more on everything from cell phones to vacations to automobiles.” Statistics also show that kids and tweens influence another $150 billion of their parents' spending. So what are we to do with this information?

Wherever you stand on the issue of marketing to kids and teens, there’s no disputing that (done right), an early investment in the kids and tweens business can be a driving force in your company’s future and long term success. The question is… how do you do it right?

We at Hopscotch Consulting spend a lot of time pondering this issue, advising companies on appropriate marketing campaigns and brand strategies that empower kids (and don't exploit.) We have lots of great ideas and insights; eventually we'll write our own book. In the meantime, we'd like to share a number of titles on the topic that tackle the issue of marketing to kids from multiple angles:

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
By John Palfrey and Urs Gasser
As a lawyers who specialize in intellectual property and information issues, Palfrey and Gasser discuss the ways "downloading, text-messaging, massively multiplayer game-playing, YouTube-watching" youth are transforming society.

Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture
By Juliet Schor
Schor exposes what she believes to be a huge cesspool of materialism, consumerism and commercialization that perhaps is leading to a generation of kids that won't learn what is important and truly necessary in life.

Brand Child: Remarkable Insights into the Minds of Today's Global Kids & Their Relationships with Brands
By Martin Lindstrom and Patricia B. Seybold
Brand Child provides a comprehensive account on how current tweens perceive brands, react to marketing and decide to spend their considerable financial buying power.

Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds
by Susan Gregory Thomas
"The moment a baby can see clearly, she becomes a consumer." Investigative journalist Thomas interviewed child development experts, product developers, marketing consultants and educators in this exposé on how marketers are targeting young minds - even before they leave the womb.

Consumer Kids: How Big Business is Grooming Our Children for Profit
By: Ed Mayo and Agnes Nairn
How do children become targeted by big business and why does it matter? Mayo and Nairn show how corporations have exploited and packaged childhood and why too much marketing can make you unhappy.

Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer's Guide to a Kid's Heart
By: Gene Del Vecchio
What's secret formula for achieving “ever-cool” status- one of the key attributes that the most successful kids’ products have in common? Del Vecchio provides some great tips on how to best establish a lifelong relationship with the youth market.

Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail
By Kit Yarrow, Jayne O'Donnell
Yarrow and O'Donnell argue that Gen Y consumers have revolutionized the way Americans shop by turning traditional sales and marketing strategies upside down. The book offers an in-depth look at what motivates these young people to buy certain products and reject others.

Getting Wiser to Teens: More Insights into Marketing to Teenagers
By: Peter Zollo
This book gives readers a thorough understanding of what teens think, feel, and need, what they do, what they buy, and how marketers should--and shouldn't--reach them.

The Great Tween Buying Machine: Capturing Your Share of the Multi-Billion-Dollar Tween Market
By: David L. Siegel, Timothy J. Coffey, Gregory Livingston
What drives tweens, and what are the social and personal implications for this market? This book explores how this target market has changed over the last few years and reveals key information on how to expand a company's marketing base.

Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation
By: Don Tapscott
As a result of their access to the digital media, today’s kids, teens, and tweens learn, work, think, shop and create differently than their parents. This book provides valuable insights for marketers who wish to understand this new generation that is surrounded by high-tech toys and tools from birth (full disclosure- when some of us at Hopscotch were employed by FreeZone.com back in the mid 1990s we worked with Don in providing many key insights)

The Kids Market: Myths and Realities
By: James U. McNeal
Called the "godfather of kids marketing," by U.S. News and World Report, James McNeal shares all his knowledge gained from years of experience marketing to kids in the USA and Asia.

Marketing to the New Super Consumer: Mom & Kid
By: Timothy Coffey, David Siegel and Gregory Livingston
Insights into understanding how moms make shopping decisions and how children are very much involved in the decision-making process.

Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
By: Anastasia Goodstein
Ypulse founder and blogger Anastasia Goodstein explains how teens use technology--including the benefits and drawbacks--and how parents can set realistic boundaries in cyberspace.

What Kids Buy and Why
By: Daniel Acuff and Robert H Reiher
Grounded in brain development with a sound underpinning of why kids behave as they do at specific ages and across gender, Acuff and Reiher take you behind the scenes of many major successful brands.

Got a favorite book to share? Let us know!

Scholastic's Book Fair Flak

Has Scholastic gone too far? Or are parents and teachers naive to think that kids will actually purchase what is good for them (i.e. 'real' books)? Or, perhaps, is this part of a much larger and sinister plot on behalf of all kids marketers to get kids to buy more and more and more licensed crap-- oops I mean creative merchandise?

Check out this week's press release from the CCFC:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - May 19 - “Stop enlisting teachers to sell toys, make-up, and brands to students through book clubs.” That’s what more than 1,200 teachers said in a letter the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood sent to Scholastic, Inc., the world’s largest educational publishing company. CCFC sent the letter, signed exclusively by teachers, after a review of Scholastic’s 2008 elementary and middle school Book Club flyers found that one-third of the items for sale were either not books, like the M&M Kart Racing Wii videogame, or were books packaged with other products, such as lip gloss and jewelry.

I attended my first Scholastic Book Fair this fall and I have to agree... it did feel like the licensed merchandise was taking center stage, and as a parent I was completely put off. Then again, if you give a kid $5, what are they going to choose? This year's Caldecot winner, or something they already recognize and like?

Let me know what you think.