Babies to Consumers

I gave birth to a little son two weeks ago, and with work still relatively fresh in my mind, I am already beginning to wonder about how my child will be affected by products and marketing early on. I guess these thoughts, although probably a bit premature, are better than sitting around watching Oprah all day during my maternity leave!

Today, companies are targeting children as well as young adults who still have positive childhood memories lingering. It isn't hard to find major marks on toys where we adults would not have expected them when we were children. When I was young, I wanted everything to be free from all graphics, markings and names. Our moms perhaps picked out and bought items for us, and we may not have thought that so bizarre. Does this option even exist any longer?

Today's kids are born into a world totally bombarded with messages. The statistic of how many choices we are forced to make per day is staggeringly high (and increasing by the minute). Every minute our brains take in massive amounts of information and we then make decisions- Am I interested? Is this worth another second of my time? Do I look twice? Delete? Save in short term memory? Long term memory? Because kids today are born into a much more intense world than we adults were, they are faster at making these decisions, however unaware he or she may be of this decision-making process.

Mom? Picking out something for the kids? Highly unlikely and probably unacceptable! Kids today know exactly what they want, and they don't want someone else doing their picking and choosing.

And of course, when generations grow up, smart companies know how to maximize the interest of the young adult through connection of positive childhood memories. Generation X'ers and Y'ers for instance, were targeted by Mazda through the connection to Transformers, the robot conversion toys which will soon celebrate its 25th anniversary. Mazda hoped to pick up on positive memories of this target market by tying in the toy with the car. See this link on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGA17R6sU3A



Interested in reading more about this topic? There are numerous excellent books that can be purchased from Amazon.com. Here is one recommendation:


Article by Gail Baker