Poor Red Bull can’t catch a break in Minneapolis.

Last summer the energy-drink maker upset some commuting bicyclists and other Minneapolis residents with their giant cube photo exhibit on the Stone Arch Bridge. Some people had a hard time navigating the bridge, others objected to the blatant advertising on public property.

And now this: According to Minneapolis Roosevelt High Principal Bruce Gilman, on October 1, three Red Bull cars (”with the cans on top”) parked on 40th Avenue across from the school while the busses were dropping off students.

The mission? Free Red Bull to anyone willing to cross the street to get it.

The Red Bull employees, members of the elite, seemingly no-boys-allowed Wiiings Team (yes, Wiiings) had already been asked to leave the same area the previous week.

Why wouldn’t the school accept Red Bull’s generousity? For one thing, Gilman said, the Wiiings Team car fleet was blocking traffic, including a school bus. Students were crossing the street and standing in traffic to get free Red Bull samples. And because no Minneapolis school sells or allows students to have beverages other than water or fruit juice on campus, Red Bull isn’t even allowed inside the school.

Gilman approached the team members and asked them to move along. They refused.

“I have never seen such obnoxious behavior,” Gilman said.

Gilman spoke with Roosevelt’s on-duty police officer, Mark Klukow, about getting the vehicles out of the way of traffic. Officer Klukow’s knowledge of Minnesota statutes — beyond the usual traffic laws – provided the perfect solution.

Officer Kluckow said it’s illegal to hand anything out to kids near school property as they are getting on or off a bus.

By this time classes were in session at Roosevelt and the the Red Bull contingent had moved on to their next captive audience at Minneapolis South High. Officer Klukow caught up with them there.

Citations were issued all around.

Gilman called this a happy ending.

And that’s no bull.

Photo courtesy yoppi

Firm perfects smart marketing approach to kids and parents explains how the really smart marketers do it.

To begin, create a product line that isn’t needed or necessary: Skin care for children.

. . . a good niche product geared to a relatively new market with few competitors.

It’s a new market because this company (mysteriously not named in the article) made it up. They invented the market. Thy have no competitors because the Unnamed Company made it up first.

And now, the strategy. The Unnamed Company:

. . . speaks on a kid-appropriate level by using “fun” adjectives such as “friendly,” “sunny,” “happy,” and “funny” to describe the products . . . .

. . . appeals to kids’ sensibilities by packaging the products in bright colors and designs . . . .

. . . added entertainment value to the product line with a CD of silly rhymes and songs to serve as mnemonic devices for developing good skin-care habits.

. . . [created a website], providing a forum for learning more about the ingredients, including the “toxic bad guys” found in everyday products. . . . [and] printable checklists for kids to earn stars for performing their skin-care regimen.

Now that’s how you get kids to ask for and parents to buy a completely unnecessary product.

Here’s another one: How do you get a Mom to buy a knife for her toddler?

They strategically placed the words [Kiddy and cutlery] in discrete places where Moms aren’t likely to see them seeing as they are concentrating on getting out of the store before their kid has a melt down.  

Katherine has a point: Even if it’s not sharp, why would Gerber even consider selling a little toddler knife?

Gerber and Kellogg’s must have attended the same product development workshop: Create and Market Products to Confuse Small Children for Fun and Profit.

Blogger and neighborhood activist Ed Kohler passed along this gem to me:

Really, Kellogg’s? Lego fruit snacks for children that look exactly like the Legos with the CHOKING HAZARD NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THREE on every box?

Influencial Marketing Blog:

Every once in a while, you see an example of a campaign or product that demonstrates a little too clearly the negative side of marketing and makes you just a little embarassed about your career choice.

Kellogg’s was one of the first companies to join the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. The participants have pledged to alter how they market food to kids — including only advertising foods that meet certain nutritional guidelines and cutting back on the licensed characters.

Kellogg’s says it has to honor its existing contracts, so I’m guessing that the Legos’ contract is one of those that goes into 2009. It looks like they shouldn’t be advertising Lego Fun Snacks to kids at all, since its 13 grams of sugar per serving violates their 12-gram limit.

Unfortunately, the pledge doesn’t extend to marketing really stupid products. Kellogg’s, exactly how do you defend this one?

Our friends at Healthy Legacy and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy have just published A Guide to Safer Children’s Products to help parents avoid purchasing products with harmful synthetic chemicals commonly used in children’s products.

The guide provides a list of safer children’s products ranging from baby bottles, utensils, pacifiers, teethers, and more.

And they’ve included a wallet-sized cutout so you’re not stumped at the store.

The IATP has also updated The Smart Plastics Guide to include the latest science and marketplace developments to help consumers make wise choices about the types of plastics they use.

Cross-posted from Tracee Sioux at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

“Kids close your eyes!”

How many times do you find yourself trying to protect your children from harmful and destructive images while watching family television?

Two years ago, while watching television, I was assaulted with an image of a woman wearing a see-through nightgown, nipples protruding and visible, erotic soft lighting, floating in a bathtub. It was intentionally erotic, except that she had been violently and bloodily murdered and this erotic woman was, in fact, dead.

“What the heck is going on?” I thought. “Why are my children and I being subjected to this kind of sexually violent imagery in a commercial?”

So, I wrote the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission used to be the people who governed our airwaves. They used to control when and what was allowed to air during times when children were expected to be viewing television. Remember when they wouldn’t let radio stations play George Michael’s, I Want Your Sex?

Many months later they wrote back.

“Each network or television station has control over what it airs during commercials. You’ll have to write each network to complain about every commercial you feel is inappropriate,” they informed me.

“What? Who made that stupid rule?” I wanted to know.

And now that I’ve read So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane Levin, Ph.D, and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D, I know who made that stupid rule.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Mondays I feel like I have all the time in the world to read — not skim — anything and everything.

Even long, complicated articles.

You too? Here’s some recommended reading:

At Sea in a Marketing-Saturated World: The Eleventh Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2007-2008. From the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University. Browse CERU’s other publications.

Monograph 19: The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use. From the National Cancer Institute. Seems that tobacco marketing tactics are mimicked by the food industry.

Consumer Behavior: The Psychology of Marketing. From Dr. Lars Perner at the University of Southern California. This is how it’s done.

Blogger Daddy Types takes on the “baby industrial complex” and exposes one of its useless, expensive products sold to new parents:

When I started my investigative crusade against BabyPlus last year, I just figured exposing it was an entertaining diversion. BabyPlus was an outlier, an isolated example of one crazy, unaccountable huckster in Seattle who’s made a twenty year career peddling the most outrageous bullshit marketing that new parents are subjected to, the kind of stuff that pushes every insecurity and aspirational button a First-Time Expectant has. So someone is gullible enough to drop $150 and strap a piece of superstitious, nonsensical junk around her belly for a few hours? Where’s the harm?

But since then, the involvement of Mothers Work, the biggest maternity store company in the country, and now Dorel, the largest baby gear company in the world, changes the game. These companies are on the hook for BabyPlus’s manipulations and deceits, in large part because they fit perfectly into the companies’ core business model, which is to sell as much stuff as they possibly can to First-Time Expectants, even if that means teaming up with a complete quack to make completely unverifiable claims to sell completely useless products.

Ditch the Characters for the Classics, from the Tampa Tribune:

At a recent book fair in Hillsborough County, young readers could find plenty of books about Sponge Bob, Barbie, Transformers and Pokemon, but would have been hard pressed to turn up more than one Caldecott Award winner.

And the timeless classics of children’s literature? Forget about them.

. . . . (A) company committed to literacy ought to recognize that quality counts in the material children read. They should keep in mind that many families rely on Scholastic for affordable children’s books, and they don’t want a cheap imitation of what literature should be.

Scholastic would do a new generation of young readers a tremendous service by making the best of their titles readily available and minimizing overtly commercial works.

Need better books? Shop Unplug Your Kids Store which has a nice selection of Fall-themed, non-licensed-charactered books available now. It’s Babysitter Approved!

And today’s the last day to click over to MOMboTV and help PEM win $100. Check out Eco Cheap: Going Green on a Budget. And thanks to everyone who has taken the time to click this week!