Josh Hallett at Marketing Profs wonders why Target isn’t held to the same ethical standards as, say, Wal-Mart. Evidently Target (through an agency) broke one of the golden rules of word-of-mouth marketing: they told some of their WOMMers not to let their Facebook buddies know who they were. Odd that we haven’t heard much about this here at Target HQ in Minneapolis (except here).

I maintain that word-of-mouth-marketing is necessary for only corporations or products that will not endure naturally. All WOMM seems to do is cheapen relationships, even the one you have with a stranger in line at a store.

Of course, my main gripe is with corporations that encourage kids to market for them. Isn’t rewarding kids by having them schill your product in emails, on message boards, and in chatrooms just teaching them that what you convey in your communications doesn’t really matter? As long as you get something out of it?

From MiceChat:

Please do me a favor and click the following links. you dont have to surf them just click them so i get points PLEASE and Thank you. and does any one know of any others?

Sounds like a real brand enthusiast! I mean, ambassador!

More evidence of the relationship between materialism and low self-esteem in children and teens comes from University of Minnesota just down the street.

From “Growing up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents” (Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Deborah Roedder John):

For many constituents, the key question is what can be done to diminish materialism among children and adolescents? The ideas receiving the most attention appear to be those centered around placing constraints on media and advertising exposure—such as bans on advertising to children, bans on corporate marketing in public schools, and parental limits on TV exposure. Our results suggest that strategies aimed at increasing self-esteem among tweens and adolescents would be effective. In fact, we found a simple selfesteem manipulation to be so powerful among adolescents that it decreased their focus on material goods to the level of much younger children.

That’s good news, as it confirms that parents and educators have the power to help kids.

Still, I can’t help but ask, why is it a battle to help maintain our children’s self-esteem? Don’t corps have any social responsibility here?

Related (in a new-researchy way): Media violence “significantly increases the risk that both children and adults will behave aggressively.”

The only [threat to public health] effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer . . . .

photo courtesy cedar

Footnoted’s post on Disney sprawl (among other things) unfortunately brought back some painful memories of an ill-fated trip to Disney World.

I was working for a for-profit university and our task was to fly to Disney World to investigate the possibility of hosting a student event there. Even though I’m pretty anti-Disney, I’m not, say, a Miss Trunchbull, so I used the free ticket there as an excuse to take my then-seven-year-old daughter.

She was thrilled, of course, but had to endure a day and a half of meetings with grown-ups.

I cannot even begin to describe the idiocracy of those meetings.

And the sales guys.

Since we would be bringing quite a large group of attendees, they were willing to bend over backwards for us: shrink-wrapping the Disney buses with our logo, adding desks to about 300 of their guest rooms, and concealing the life-sized fake-town backdrop at the “extreme stunt show” on a backlot of Disney-MGM Studios.

When they took us to lunch, it was “on the mouse.” If I heard Well, that’s the Disney difference! one more time, I was going to throw up.

Anyway, my favorite moment was when one  of the sales guys leaned down to my daughter:

Sales guy: So, who’s your favorite Disney Princess, honey?
Daughter: Umm . . . (looks frantically at her mother) . . . I don’t know.
Sales guy: Oh, it’s so hard to choose just one, isn’t it?
Me: No, that’s not it. She doesn’t know who you are talking about.
Sales guy:

Today Disney spends four billion dollars marketing Disney princesses to girls. And babies. And brides. And everyone else. Amazon.com lists no fewer than 7,806 Disney Princess “products.”

My daughter and I stayed an extra day at Disney World (it rained). Disney did not get that event contract with us. And I can guarantee that I’ll never set foot in Disney World again.

Shrek continues his world brand domination as Macy’s Holiday Ambassador and featured new giant balloon at the Macy’s Day Parade.

Shrek joins cartoon characters Mickey Mouse, Underdog, Bullwinkle, and Snoopy in the annual Thanksgiving Day event. But unlike his counterparts, Shrek joins the parade as an artificially created “beloved” character that children (and adults), through rapid-fire promotion, have been forced to embrace.

From the press release:

“Shrek is a new American icon,” says Robin Hall, Executive Producer of Macy’s Parade. . . . “All of us at Macy’s Parade are totally immersed in ‘Project Shrek,’ and we’re thrilled to be working with the team from DreamWorks Animation in the creation of this new Parade classic.”

. . . Shrek’s first ever participation in the Parade will coincide with the DV release this holiday season of “Shrek the Third,” the latest installment from DreamWorks Animation . . . .

DreamWorks Animation’s Head of Worldwide Marketing & Consumer Products Anne Globe stated, “We’re honored to be a part of this great holiday tradition . . . this parade gives [Shrek’s] fans a unique opportunity to see their favorite ogre in a whole new way.”

And seeing Shrek in a “whole new way” is pretty difficult to do, since you could find shrek on just about anything. “Shrek” items at Amazon.com:

(more…)

Of course I’m on the Bratz mailing list. This came today:

If you can’t read that, it says:

Hey Bratz Fan! Head on down to your local Subway restaurants from Novemer 19th to December 30th and get Fashionably Fit! With every purchase of a super delish “Fresh Fit for Kids” meal you’ll get free fabulous Bratz swag. Being beautiful means taking care of yourself and above all eating healthy! Check out BRATZ.COM for more info! Later Style Star, The Bratz 

Great, I’m thinking, one fast-food place I don’t mind taking my kids to and now I have to avoid Subway, too. And what exactly is “fashionably fit?”

And, free swag? They’ve made a Bratz-themed evergreen decoration for my door?

Clicking through I find that the free giveaway is a “glam n’ go compact” or a “Bratz express your bratitude door hanger.”

And they’ve trademarked “bratitude.”

I do have a point here. Check out the background pattern on the ad. Look closely.

Isaac Larian, is this still my twisted sense of what I see in an advertisement?

Friday night my daughters’ school held their annual book fair, and it was not sponsored by Scholastic.

Many schools take advantage of the book-fair-in-a-box sponsored by Scholastic. We don’t.

What’s wrong with the Scholastic Book Fair? For some background, The Not Quite Crunchy Parent reviews Scholastic’s business model. 

Blogger Julie thinks that the event has become a Gadget Fair, not a book fair. And H at the Letter of the Day says that children do not need to own so many books and should spend more time at the library. Excellent points.

I’m against it because it gives corporations a captive audience and another way to market to kids. Through their book fairs and their school flyers, Scholastic has become nothing more that an advertising venue for brand extensions: Barbie, Disney Princess, Littlest Pet Shop, Pokemon, Zack and Cody.

Read Mom’s post on why this is harmful and what she is trying to do about it at her child’s school.

Scholastic does provide a way to get low-cost books into the hands of kids (and teachers) who may not otherwise have access (outside of a library, of course).

Here’s another way to do it.

Families donate books to the school. Our volunteers spent Thursday evening sorting all the donated books. On Friday the books were set up by category — kids’ books in one room and adult books in another. Books were priced fifty cents for a child’s book or a paperback, one dollar for an adult hardcover, and ten cents for “waggy” books (you know, the really thin kind of kid’s paperback you get at a Scholastic Book Fair).

Dinner was served. A bluegrass band played. Local children’s author John Coy spoke to the kids about the process of publishing a book.

This is one of the best events at our school. It’s crowded. Families eat together surrounded by books. Everyone comes home with a sackful of new things to read. The school makes a little money. The books that don’t sell are donated.

It’s recycling. And it’s a simple way to stop putting more money into the children’s marketing machine.

To combat excessive marketing to children, it’s important to understand how marketers think. How do they plan to get into your child’s head — and into yours?

While writing a post on extravagant birthday parties, I ran across the 2007 Youth Marketing Mega Event, a conference for marketers hoping to leverage the “kids, tweens, teens, and college student” markets.

I found some of the sessions particularly outrageous. Is this what marketers are really thinking about?

Create Online Loyalty Programs: Kid Friendly and COPPA Compliant. Sure, those pesky laws to protect children’s privacy online have really taken a bite out of our bottom line, but there’s no law against manipulating the little tykes! At least not yet!

Kids & Wellness: It’s the Next Big Thing, But it’s Already Here. Since those tree-hugging-hippie-health-nut scientists have somehow convinced the public that consuming an all-junk-food diet while sitting on the sofa playing Xbox isn’t actually good for kids, let’s jump on the bandwagon! Quick!

Leveraging Viral Marketing Through In-School Promotion to Start a Marketing Revolution! Kids in school are a captive market — if they try to get away, they’ll get sent to the principal’s office! There’s no way they can ignore us! Bonus: we’ll tempt the teacher with incentives, say, textbooks? And cut a check to the administration while we’re at it! They can’t say no, because they need the money!

Growing a Branch for your Brand on the Family Tree: Achieving Loyalty with the Family.* Well, now that’s just clever metaphor-making. Wait, shouldn’t it be Growing a Branch on the Family Tree for Your Brand?

Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about the corporate dollars spent on new ways to manipulate my children. In a world of mounting personal debt and limited natural resources, is this akin to offering a kid a lollypop to get in the car?

*Not really a session title. I think it was a bullet about the conference’s goals. Or reasons to attend the conference. Something like that.

Originally published as a similar post at twoknives.net