Moms spend much more money that Dads do. More than 2 trillion (with a ‘T’) dollars a year! That’s a darned lucrative market, so it’s one with a hefty amount of psychologizing put into it by Madison Avenue when they’re designing ad campaigns.

Now, there are people out there who will insist that the target audience for all this marketing is children, and many psychologists insist that advertising targeting children is unethical. Not that ethics counts for very much when there’s trillions of dollars on the table, of course. Deal is, children don’t work for a living, thus have little money to spend on all those expensive, questionably useful consumer items they’re being sold. The person who is REALLY being targeted is Mom. The marketers are just adding to the marketing appeal by enlisting children to do their work for them!

Moms generally don’t watch as much television as their kids do. According to New Dream: Facts About Marketing, the average American child watches about 40,000 television commercials a year, which translates to more than 100 a day. This translates directly into what savvy marketers call “The Nag Factor” – getting kids to nag their Moms into buying something they want (but probably don’t need). Here are some facts about that “Nag Factor” to keep in mind…

• American teenagers will ask Mom to buy them something an average of 9 times before she finally gives in.
• More than 10% of 12-13 year olds admitted to asking more than 50 times for a product.
• More than half of children say getting Mom to buy a product they want makes them “feel better about themselves.”
• Nearly a third of children admitted that peer pressure plays a big role in what products they desire.
• The nag strategy pays off for both kids and marketers – 55% of kids say they’re usually successful in getting Mom to buy.

And don’t think that very young children are immune. Recent studies show that by the time a child is 36 months old – that’s 3 years old – they recognize an average of 100 brand logos. Some kids get money from their parents instead of goodies, and spend a collective total of $24 billion of it themselves on products they want. It’s their influence on how parents spend that the marketers are mostly after, since that figure dwarfs allowance big time.

So. How do advertisers do it? Here are the Top Ten Media Marketing Strategies for getting Mom to buy a child what s/he doesn’t need:

1. Play the “Cool” angle. If you can convince a kid that she or he will automatically become leader of the in-crowd if Mom buys the product, the kid will do all the hard-sell work.

2. Introduce kids to products at school. If a product marketer can get an ‘educational’ website approved by grade school teachers instructing classes in computer tech, internet resources and keyboarding, the kids will insist Moms purchase the products on a regular basis at home.

3. Create a children’s television program based on your products. Air it on PBS or other ‘kid-friendly’ channels in the afternoon or early evening, or on Saturdays. This ensures kids will nag for products associated with the program – toys, food, games, videos, clothing – you name it, they’ll make sure it gets bought.

4. Product placement is important. In the cereal aisle at the grocery, make sure the junk cereals are on the lower shelves. Put the candy and bubble gum within easy reach of short folks. Place the junk toys and candy below the tabloid rags at the checkout stands, Mom will be distracted. If a kid can reach it, Mom isn’t likely to get violent in public trying to pry it out of their screaming kids’ hands.

5. Make sure kids know that chemical dyed sugar water will make them fit and strong – and most of all, sexy. Then the kids will make Mom buy.

6. Don’t be fooled by movie ratings. Kids get into PG-13 and R rated movies all the time. Use those marketing trailers to sell, sell, sell!

7. Sex sells. Especially to 10-year old girls.

8. Use pointless approval slogans. “Mom Approved” or “Mom’s #1 Choice” are good whines to get children to demand bubble gum toothpaste, nutrient-sapping cereals, sugar drinks, candy disguised as fruit, and any sort of junk food.

9. Associate your brand with a cartoon character, clown or pre-teen idol. If the kids’ latest heartthrob wears X shoes exclusively, or dresses like a whore, the kids will demand those shoes and that brand of ‘junior petite’ hooker gear. If Ronald McDonald does a school magic show, the kids will want Happy Meals exclusively for at least three months.

10. Play the abuse card. Make kids believe that they’re being abused if Mom doesn’t buy them what they want right now, they will get that message across in no uncertain terms to Mom.

Urban legends – often spread on kids’ internet chat sites and through their cell messaging cliques – are very helpful for that last one. If a kid can inform Mom with a straight face that some kid in Peoria (or Bangor, or Seattle) committed suicide because they were being harassed for not having this jacket or those shoes or knowing all the words to that rap music song, Mom will feel guilty and concerned that her reticence to buy will drive the young’uns to suicide.

Interestingly enough, I have been unable to find any statistics on how many Moms go crazy, commit suicide or end up in jail for NOT buying things their media overstimulated children demanded. There probably aren’t any such statistics, but it’s a darned good thing (if you are a marketer who knows how to make children do your work for you) kids aren’t nearly as media savvy as Moms are!

Links:

Kids and Commercialism

APA Report: Selling to Kids

We are coming for your children

Online Marketiing to Kids: Strategies and Techniques

Kids for Sale: Television versus the Internet

My younger daughter and her husband visited this past weekend from Indianapolis. She’s into her 4th month of pregnancy (her first), just getting over the serious morning sickness phase, needed some Mom-time. Which I was of course delighted to lavish on her, sympathizing with her queazy stomach and re-arranging innards, happy to whip up some colorful stir-fry, hummus, falafel and tabouli for pita sandwiches, anything that sounded good, that she thought she might be able to keep down.

She’s never been a happy morning person, so when her hubby mentioned how hard the last few months have been – a strain on their relationship as well as their income since they work together out of home – I wasn’t very sympathetic. Grandpa could take care of that chore. And he did.

My hubby and I just celebrated our 38th anniversary earlier this month, but didn’t get to go to the lake house like we have ever since it got built because elder daughter blew the engine in her car, my car’s back end is about to walk out from underneath it, and that puts us down to a single pick’em up truck we’ve got to share. Ah, well. We’ve had worse anniversaries…

Anyway, I mention this because my husband – “Uncle Grandpa” to dozens and just plain “Grandpa” to a rising tide of others – is amazingly well trained. I was pregnant for 18 months out of our first 3 years of marriage, and was deathly ill for every minute of it. What my Son-in-Law was complaining about seems trivial compared to that, as well as compared to all the years since I decided to stop doing the pregnant thing. His marital philosophy is one that should be preserved and taught as classical wisdom, which seems to be in very short supply in these days of “for better and screw you if it gets worse” serial monogamy.

She Is Always Right, You Are Always Wrong.

Short, simple yet profound, endearing in the extreme. Growing, having and raising a baby isn’t an easy job, and the vast majority of the physical investment in that endeavor comes exclusively from the woman. That’s just how nature and/or God set things up, we should presume life and/or love set it up that way on purpose: it works, better than possible alternatives. For couples to get through the year it takes to grow, produce and nurture an infant to a good healthy start in life, it’s just best for the Dad to live this philosophy as much as possible, put aside his own juvenile tendencies and ‘all about me’ delusions.

I admit to being somewhat flummoxed by the underlying ‘wrong-ness’ of pair bonding these days, when half of marriages end in divorce before even five short years, kids grow up in multiple homes with multiple Moms and Dads and Temporaries (or none at all), and nobody seems willing to build relationships rather than simply toss inconvenient ones out with last year’s clothes. A year in the course of a lifetime is nothing, relatively speaking. To a mere temporary arrangement, it’s forever.

That’s a shame, but it’s what is real in the world my children are trying to negotiate, and the one my grandchildren will soon be trying to live with. At any rate, I got to baby my baby for a couple of days, Grandpa got to lend sage advice and an understanding ear to her choice of mate. That’s really about all we’re good for at this point.

Though we did spend hours and hours around the campfire, playing dice at the kitchen bar, sitting idly about the living room thinking up baby names. THAT is a fun pastime! I think we went all the way through the alphabet from Adam to Zelda and everything in between – including, of course, Elvis.

But it seems they’ve already settled on a girl name – Sunshine – that I’m hoping may reflect a happier morning person personality than her Mom ever managed. By the time they departed for home on Sunday afternoon, the guys had settled on two boy names I’m hoping will be overruled firmly when the baby is born (if it’s a he)…

GuitarGreg and CoolAssMojo (both as single first names). I voted for Elvis, so this is NOT my fault!

Links:

Baby Names, Name Origin and Meaning

Unique Baby Names, Meanings