"marketing to kids" news and stories

Baby carrots are getting an extreme makeover.

It seems the only people who turn to the diminutive vegetable for their afternoon snack are guilt-ridden dieters and toddlers, but a $25 million re-branding campaign by a consortium of carrot growers is aiming to change that.

Forget the fact that carrots are good for you. Instead, the campaign appears to be focused on a crafty bit of marketing-based camouflage: if you put baby carrots in a snack-sized potato chip bag and give the bag the tricked-out POW! of, say, a bag of Doritos, can you convince people to "Eat 'Em Like Junk Food," as the new slogan says?

Of course, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in semantics to note the comparative simile there. "Like junk food" is a slightly hipper way of saying that they're not junk food. Yes, they're orange; yes, they're oblong; yes, they crunch -- but for better or for worse, they're no Cheetos.

As part of the campaign, carrot growers are also planning seasonal tie-ins (such as "scarrots" for Halloween), some weird-sounding phone app of people actually eating carrots, and TV commercials that, according to USA Today, "tout baby carrots as extreme, futuristic and even, yes, sexy."

It's an old story in marketing. Play to the children, in order to get their parents to spend money on their product. It's why Saturday morning cartoons were once so popular and why lots of the most kid-appealing stuff is placed on the grocery store shelves at their eye-level. Mostly though, this advertising tries to be somewhat discreet.

Not satisfied with the soft sell, one Dairy Queen went for a less subtle approach, entreated kids to "scream until Daddy stops the car." Sadly, this method would have backfired with my parents and would have resulted in us never seeing the inside of a Dairy Queen until we were old enough to get there on our own steam.

[via Copyranter]

Source

I'm not sure if this will surprise a lot of people, but the Center For Science in the Public Interest says that 80% of the ads on Nickelodeon are for junk food.

The organization says that that 80% of ads are for restaurants, foods, and beverages that are advertised not only on the network but also tied into its characters and products. Of course, Nickelodeon doesn't agree with the study, and a spokesman says that 10% of the network's advertising tries to push healthy foods and that they are working with companies to market carrots, nectarines and other fruits and vegetables. I'm not even sure what that means - will be see Nickelodeon Bananas in the produce section next year?

You can read the entire article in the July issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

[via That's Fit]