Understanding children’s developmental stages is the foundation for marketing directed at kids.

Via Derek Baird, here’s a slide show created by Dan Pankraz, an Australian “youth planning specialist.” Keep in mind that I’m not picking on Mr. Pankraz in particular. This is just an example of how marketers go about trying to influence your children.

In summary, a marketer’s job is to:

– Help young children feel imaginative, clever, understood, connected, and valued;
– Help “tweens” feel self-confident and proud; and
– Help teens feel independent.

Excuse me, but isn’t that my job?

The lie in all this, the lie that can lead to family stress, depression and low self-esteem, is that children will not really feel understood, self-confident or independent by buying something.

This is exploitation for profit — pure and simple. And how youth marketers can continue to use kids’ developmental deficiencies to make money is beyond me.

Remember, kids are not little adults. They do not understand the intention of commercial messages the way we do.

Talk to your kids. Constantly. Because marketers do.

New resource for kids, parents and teachers: Admongo.gov, the FTC’s advertising literacy site

Two recent reads have triggered flashbacks to the world in which corporations will do anything to sell, sell, sell.

From Ph.D. in Parenting, one of my new favorite blogs, comes the Child’s Hierarchy of Needs (and the followup, Intersecting Needs: Maslow, interdependence, parenting, caregiving, relationships).

Sadly, this reminded me of how marketers use Maslow to pinpoint weaknesses in children’s developmental stages to create more effective marketing.

I first ran into this concept when reading The Great Tween Buying Machine: Capturing Your Share of the Multi-Billion-Dollar Tween Market.

No longer children and not quite teenagers, tweens – kids aged 8 to 12 years – are one of the fastest growing market segments for corporate America. With significant influence on household and family purchases, the four key motivating drivers for tweens are fun, freedom, power, and belonging. The Great Tween Buying Machine will demystify the newly discovered tween market using research findings and by discussing product development techniques and the latest marketing strategies in packaging, advertising, and promotions.

As one customer review states,

Siegel demonstrates why it is that this “tween” market has become so interesting for businesses: this particular age group is old enough to make suggestions to their parents about how to spend their money but still young enough to be utterly manipulated.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any creepier, Truthout exposes more about the practice of neuromarketing — using medical technology to determine your brain’s reactions to various commercial marketing techniques. I guess the kid’s version of this would be whatever goes on at the Disney Advertising Research Lab.

I find these standard practices wholly unethical when applied to children. You?

An American Girl Doll catalog arrived in our mailbox yesterday. When I called to be removed from their mailing list, I found out our address had been purchased from another company but that the customer service representative could delete our address from all future mailings.

The rep was quite nice on the phone, and I swear I was not looking for trouble. After we had conducted our business, she continued: “Why don’t you give your catalog to a little girl in the neighborhood? Or donate it to your local library? They love to get our catalogs!”

Really? I was skeptical. A call to my local library confirmed this. “You’re right in thinking that’s odd, I don’t know what we’d do with a catalog,” a librarian at Minneapolis’ Central Library told me.

Another Minneapolis librarian told me that they’d probably donate it to a local shelter.

Our copy stayed in our house. While I worked in the kitchen, my seven-year-old read it to me, and I used it as an exercise to help her understand the value of money. For example, instead of paying $44 for the “homemade cookie” accessory pack, we can use what we already have in our own kitchen to make cookies — and figure out what else $44 could buy.

After that, she took her scissors to it and created stories surrounding the cut-out pictures of the the dolls and the dogs and the horses.

Seems an American Girl Doll sales catalog is good for something.

Related: The cutline from the photo accompanying Chris Riemenschneider’s Strib column today about the Mall of America was changed in the online version. The original reads:

Real American girls rest at the MOA’s American Girl store. With luck and a few made-up stories (such as the one about the doll that bit a girl), our author can steer his daughter away from the place.

Precious!

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Run, now, to True/Slant to read Stephen C. Webster’s The Most Offensive Commercial Ever Produced. A beautiful dissection of a current Levi’s commerial in which Walt Whitman and his words are bastardized, Webster exposes the profit-fueled hypocrisy that brings together a poor, abolitionist poet and a company known for numerous fair labor violations.

What would Whitman have written about such a uniquely American company [Levi Strauss]?

Would he have joyously celebrated an institution which left its equal daughters and equal sons to rot in the baking Texas sun?

Would the great poet have rejoiced in the servitude of those not fortunate enough to live on allegedly free soil?

Oh yes, perhaps he would have taken up for a company that stitches $5 of cloth together and resells it for nearly $100.

Or would he have beat his breast in bitter sadness and populist fury at what the “grand, sane, towering, seated Mother” America had wrought on her children?

Read and talk your (older) children through this one. True/Slant, where have you been all my life?

♦ ♦ ♦

Scholastic Corporation continues to hide behind their “book publisher” label and promoting Goosebumps-branded products for Halloween: The televison series will air on Cartoon Network five days a week; Goosebump ”premiums” will be featured at Taco Bell, bookmarks, treat bags and posters will be distributed via AAA to public schools,* and free Goosebump-branded activities will be offered at shopping malls on Saturdays.   

Television’s Cartoon Network? Fast-food restaurant Taco Bell? And shopping malls? I must not be the only one confused, as even the good folks at  Scholastic’s blog need to remind us:

. . . we can’t forget that Goosebumps is all about the THRILL of reading . . . .

Uh-huh.

*Note to Scholastic: Better check school policies. Minneapolis Public Schools prohibits selling to children — and teachers — in school.

♦ ♦ ♦

And finally, Target Australia is selling matching bras and underwear to toddlers: Frightening pressure is putting young girls in bras.

A quick memo to parents concerned that their children will be a captive audience to President Obama’s speech to school children today: I understand your worries.

My full-time job is in public education, so I’ve heard from lots of folks concerned about what their children might hear.

In between calls from parents last week, I also found out that a shoe buyer from Minneapolis’ Target Corporation was hoping to make appointments to stop by some Minneapolis schools to check out what the kids are wearing on their feet.

Talk about captive. Don’t parents want to know if their children are going to be used as research subjects?

But such is nature of public schools. Some children will be a captive audience today; most children are a captive audience every day. Corporate capitalists have long had free access to children in schools, teaching them to be loyal to brands without question. That owning more will make you successful and happy. And that good Americans are good consumers.

How? Take the shoe-selling Target brand and its famous red logo. Target awards grants to help schools pay for field trip transportation. But, as part of the deal, kids return from their trips carrying a black Target-logoed backback, essentially making every one of them a walking ad.

Of course it’s not just the Target Corporation. Junior Achievement is allowed free access to your kids, as are companies like Bus Radio (to and from school),  PepsiCo (in the lunchroom), Procter and Gamble (in health class), McDonald’s (on report cards), Piper Jaffray (in high school), and Scholastic (everywhere), among many others. 

So, parents, I understand your concerns. Sanctioned messages that go against my values appear in my children’s classrooms all the time.

Thankfully, it looks like the President’s speech will be pretty innocuous.

My advice? After the speech, which they will probably hear or read at some point, talk to them. Ask them what they heard. Tell them what you think about what President Obama said. Point out any differences in the values you hold for your family and the message that they heard.

Because after all, as I’ve been told many times, you can’t shield your child from the evils of the outside world.

But you can talk to your kids. At least that’s what I do.

From today’s Star Tribune:

When preteen girls as young as 5 get their first manicure, pedicure or updo at birthday parties held in Twin Cities’ beauty schools, it’s all about making them feel special and beautiful.

Because the best way to indoctrinate (yes, I said indoctrinate) girls into our consumer culture is to a) start her young, b) make sure she feels her value is equated with beauty and c) create an image of female beauty that is impossible to attain so that she continues to spend her money on products that promise to help get her there.

And I guess it works.

Fun!

Back. To. School. Time to be inundated with messages on what kids must buy to be cool this fall.

Summer’s just about over — time to get ready for a new school term! Back-to-school fashions for your kids are lots more exciting than they used to be.

Exciting? Really? A friend extols this writing rule: If you have to say it’s exciting, IT PROBABLY ISN’T.

Granted, parents this year are being more careful with their spending.

One mother, Clarissa Nassar, signed up for alerts about sales on a Web site called Shop It To Me. When she saw that her daughter’s favorite brand, Baby Phat, was on sale at Macy’s, she promptly drove to the department store to shop for school clothes.

“I got an alert for the cutest tie-dye pink top,” said Ms. Nassar, a mother of two, Mikayla, 7, and Joseph, 3, in Johnstown, N.Y. “Originally it was $36 and I got it for $9.75.”

Your 7-year-old has a favorite clothing brand? How? HOW?

For some perspective (and dare I say balance?) during the back-to-school shopping frenzy, read Kelsey Timmerman’s (@KelseyTimmerman) blog, Adventures of an Engaged Consumer.

Another gem: Why Parents Should Reject Back-to-School Ads in August by Luann Bradley (@inthegreenlane).

My goal this fall to to buy nothing new. Clothing from the thrift stores, supplies from the unused stash we’ve accumulated over the years. More ideas at The Not Quite Crunchy Parent.

Again this year, I lamented not being able to attend BlogHer ‘o9, *the* conference for women who blog.

Instead, I settled in to read about it from my Twitter feed, as I do for many conferences I can’t attend.

And I found out that BlogHer is not for *all* women who blog.

From the many other tweets that promised great product giveaways and invitations to swag rooms, I knew that I would never lament not being able to attend BlogHer again. 

I do get it. I understand the desire to make money while blogging. It’s my dream job. However, my passion and this blog does not lend itself to attracting advertisers. (For example, Webkinz did not send me a free toy.)

But I am so disappointed that women bloggers — or more accurately, mommy bloggers — have become synonymous with product promotion and endorsements.

See, women love to shop! And shopping for their babies! And writing about shopping! That’s what we do! We’re all momfluencers!

It’s a Sarah Haskins’ Target Women in the making.

Marketing Mommy was there: 

I attended a BlogHer 09 panel discussion called Sponsored vs. Unsponsored, and one of the moderators asked people to raise their hands if they thought getting paid to write a product review was okay or not. A lot of people voted okay, some weren’t sure and I raised my hand for Not. I was the only one.

I spoke my piece, reassuring the filled-to-capacity room that I had nothing against product reviews (hey, I’ve done a few) or giveaways, but that I felt that basic integrity demands we disclose if a product has been given to us for free. And if a blogger’s been paid to write a post or do a giveaway, it should be treated as an ad. Because that’s what it is.

Honestly, I thought my feelings were pretty mainstream. Not any more. The women in the room were afraid to post negative reviews. Even posting constructive criticism was avoided. They were terrified of pissing off the PR folks and stopping the flow of goodies. And besides, writing a product review or hosting a giveaway was hard work. They deserved to be compensated for their work on behalf of brands. An interesting argument, but if you’re turning yourself into a freelance copywriter, isn’t it a little unfair to your readers to post as just another regular, trustworthy mom?

There’s more from other attendees. 

For the record, I support the proposed FTC rules that would require bloggers to disclose their relationships with products and companies, and I was happy to join about 500 others in signing the Blog with Integrity pledge.

And now I’m on the hunt for a conference on blogging. Without the swag.

UPDATE: It’s come to my attention that my Contact form is not working. If you’d like to get in touch, please send an email directly to lisa@parentsforethicalmarketing.org.

“I worry that even if Michelle and I do our best to impart what we think are important values to our children, the media out there will undermine our lessons and teach them something different.”

During his campaign, President Obama acknowledged that he is among the parents struggling against an onslaught of corporate marketing that hurts our children—and makes it harder for parents to parent.

Today, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood sent a Father’s Day appeal to President Obama, signed by over twenty five hundred parents, petitioning him to launch a systematic review of the regulations on marketing to children to determine if they offer sufficient protection for twenty-first century families.  The petition, which was also signed by professionals who work with children and families, urges the President to direct the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to evaluate current policies to determine whether or not they adequately protect children.

Since the 1980s, when children’s television was deregulated and Congress restricted the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to regulate marketing to children, the amount of advertising and marketing targeting children has exploded in volume and sophistication. The digital revolution and increasingly miniaturized technology allow marketers today to expand their reach far beyond television and to insert their brands in children’s lives in ways that were inconceivable just a few decades ago.  Taking unfair advantage of children’s developmental inability to understand the persuasive intent of advertising messages, unregulated marketing is training children to be consumers rather than healthy, well-rounded citizens. Many parents felt strongly enough about the commercialization of their children’s lives that they added their own personal appeals to the letter. 

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