USA Today on New Techniques in Marketing to Kids

Posted on August 15, 2011 at 3:55 pm

USA Today has an important article on new technologies for marketing to kids.

With the use of new, kid-enchanting technologies, are savvy marketers gaining the upper hand on parents? Are toy marketers such as Ganz, food marketers such as McDonald’s and kid-coddling apparel retailers such as 77kids by American Eagle too eager to target kids?

At stake: $1.12 trillion. That’s the amount that kids influenced last year in overall family spending, says James McNeal, a kid marketing consultant and author of Kids as Consumers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children. “Up to age 16, kids are determining most expenditures in the household,” he says. “This is very attractive to marketers.”

Children who play on websites like Webkinz are bombarded by ads. The article follows one girl who repeatedly clicks on an ad for Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, not because she has any interest in the film but because clicking on the link is the way she earns accessories for her virtual characters.

“We occasionally introduce limited-time promotions so that our Webkinz World members can enjoy fun, unique activities and events,” says Susan McVeigh, a Ganz spokeswoman.

That corporate doublespeak is appalling. The purpose of these “limited-time promotions” is so that children can be targeted for ads, and this is all within the context of a site that is itself an enormous interactive ad for Ganz. Parents should be aware of the new avenues for trying to sell to kids and should have continuing conversations with children and tweens about the way that marketing is designed to make them think they want things that are not really important. Or, in the case of the “Judy Moody” movie, to see movies that ARE a bummer.

Harry Potter and the Curse of the Non-Fair Trade Chocolate

Posted on July 27, 2011 at 8:18 am

The last of the Harry Potter films is out and Fandango reported over 5000 shows were sold out before opening day. It’s a likely candidate for this year’s box office champion with multi-million dollar revenues from tickets and perhaps even more from the lucrative licensing and product sales, estimated at over $14 billion by Brand Licensing Europe. But a recent campaign endorsed by four members of the Potter cast demonstrates that these partnerships can bring risks as well as rewards.

An advocacy group self-dubbed the Harry Potter Alliance has written a letter to the studio behind the Potter films, NBC Universal and Time-Warner asking them to make sure that the chocolate sold in the Harry Potter wrappers meets Time-Warners’ own ethical sourcing guidelines, with copies to Potter author J.K. Rowling, the corporations behind the theme park, and more.

The Harry Potter Alliance has also asked its members, over 100,000 in 70 chapters around the world, to support this initiative by uploading a video on the subject to CNN’s anti-slavery Freedom Project and by purchasing fair trade chocolate and sending the wrappers to Time-Warner.

Evanna Lynch, who plays Harry’s classmate Luna Lovegood, has signed the Alliance’s petition and made a statement in support of the campaign. Three other actors from the cast signed on this week.

Warner Brothers has agreed to work with the Alliance and assured them that their ethical sourcing guidelines are included as a part of every licensing agreement. In the US, most of the Harry Potter chocolate is sold in the theme park through a re-license arrangement, and their candy is a tiny fraction of the non-fair trade chocolate sold each year, so their involvement is limited. But their profile is high and their interest in the brand is strong, which makes them a good target for this campaign.

Harry Potter Alliance director Andrew Slack told me that Warners is “a cut above” the other companies. He is optimistic about making progress and Warner Consumer Products confirmed to me that they are working toward a solution. In the meantime, there are a few lessons to be learned about licensing risk.

1. Using an established name or brand to sell your product can leave you open for a judo-like upset, using your own strength against you. The chocolate companies and theme park paid for a license because they thought the Potter name would help sell chocolate. The boost the candy got from the name may be overtaken by the reputational hit the name gets from selling the candy. My favorite brand expert is Jonathan Baskin (he’s also my cousin), who says, “This illustrates the complexity of translating an imaginary idea into a concrete product or service. I can’t imagine that the short-term upside outweighs the risks.”

2. “Guidelines” are easy to agree to and difficult to enforce. Time-Warner may have an excellent ethical sourcing policy for its own products, but insisting on non-enforceable guidelines for licensees without any effort to check independent third-party assessments leaves them vulnerable to this kind of bad publicity.

3. The group that is making the most effective use of the Potter name is the one that did not enter into a license or pay a fee — the Harry Potter Alliance. It has no official connection to the J.K. Rowling trademarked properties but it has been named a “fan site of the month” by her website and she has spoken approvingly of its activities. Just as the wizards in the Potter books can’t match the healing properties of the muggle chocolates, businesses who think they understand the best use of brands have a lot to learn from the amateurs on this one.

Scholastic is Selling Coal Power — to Children

Posted on May 11, 2011 at 2:34 pm

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood reports that esteemed publisher Scholastic is sending out “teaching materials” to schools that amounts to a commercial for coal power. The coal industry, through the American Coal Foundation, has hired Scholastic to produce The United States of Energy, sent to tens of thousands of 4th grade classrooms around the country. CCFC says:

Teachers are told that the curriculum aligns with national standards because it teaches children the advantages and disadvantages of different types of energy. But while the lessons do extol the advantages of coal, they fail to mention a single disadvantage. Nothing about the Appalachian mountains chopped down to get at coal seams. Nothing about the poisons released when coal is burned. Nothing about the fact that burning coal is the single biggest contributor to human-created greenhouse gases.

Schools should teach fully and honestly about coal and other forms of energy. However, the materials produced by Scholastic are not genuinely educational; they are industry PR.

With budget cuts and inadequate resources, it is tempting to take advantage of these kinds of “free” materials created with industry support. But schools should not present commercial material as a part of the curriculum — unless it is to teach children how to separate advocacy from objective, balanced information. To protest this slanted information masquerading as a book and degradation of the Scholastic imprint, write to Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson.

Ralph Lauren Pretends His Catalog is a Book For Kids

Posted on May 1, 2011 at 9:07 pm

Renée Loth writes in the Boston Globe this weekend about Ralph Lauren’s new “book” for children — really a thinly disguised catalog. They’re calling it “The first ever shoppable children’s storybook.’’

“The RL Gang: A Magically Magnificent School Adventure’’ is a 32-page volume, aimed at preschool-age children. Its slim plot involves a group of eight impossibly cute classmates, all dressed in Polo Ralph Lauren finery, with names like Willow, Oliver, Hudson, and River. The junior fashion icons use magical paintbrushes to draw themselves a garden party that comes alive, complete with ice cream and kittens.

Woozy yet? Reading along in the online video version — narrated by Uma Thurman — parents and kids can take a break to “look inside Oliver’s closet,’’ for example, and buy the twee outfits. “The RL Gang’’ is touted unblushingly as “an innovative way for parents and children to explore style, literature, and digital technology together.’”

It’s bad enough when product placement makes movies and television shows into infomercials and cross-promotions turn all kinds of products and almost-always unhealthy food into promotions for movies and television shows. But this is essentially a catalog designed to sell very expensive clothes to children, who are not old enough to understand the fast-disappearing line between writing and pictures that are intended to tell a story based on imagination, experience, and heart and writing and pictures designed to make you think you want things you would otherwise never have thought about.

To complain: CustomerAssistance@RalphLauren.com

Morgan Spurlock’s TED Talk on Product Placement in Movies

Posted on April 6, 2011 at 5:12 pm

I’ll be posting an interview with Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) about his new movie on product placement soon. Here’s the talk he gave at TED about making a movie about product placement that was entirely funded by product placement. This is why the official name of the film is “POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Story Ever Sold.” And yes, onstage naming rights for this talk were sponsored too. Watch to find out from who and how much.