Peadar Drislane, from Azure, looks at the topical and challenging subject of advertising to children online.

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Advertisers have always tended to focus on the younger end of the age spectrum. And while 16 to 34 year-olds may get the lion's share of UK marketing budgets, for some brands the aim is to reach even younger consumers.

In the past ten years the sophistication of games and toys has soared, cheaper electronics and robotics, for example, have enabled what were once just rich boys toys to become the playthings of a generation. The problem is that as while the toys and games have become more sophisticated, the marketing and media planning and buying for toy and game campaigns has lagged behind.

It's not necessarily just the fault of strategists and planners, marketing for games and toys has been underpinned by the need to convince retailers that a campaign will have 'X number' of TVRs supporting the promotion. The bigger the TV numbers, the more products will be stocked and supported in-store resulting in greater sales - or so the myth goes.

Second generation digital natives

However, such thinking fails to recognise that today's 7 to 15-year-olds are the second generation of so-called "Digital Natives". Toy and game marketers are missing a trick to engage with multi-tasking, multi-channel web 2.0 kids on their level if they stick to the tried and trusted strategies of yore.

With the explosion of digital platforms from Facebook and Bebo to mobile and Neopets, today's kids are logging on and switching off TV. It's a fact that Disney recognised in August last year [2007] when it paid a minimum of $350m and possibly much more, depending on performance, for Club Penguin, a Canadian-based virtual world featuring animated penguin avatars who inhabit a snowy landscape.

The site was second only to Webkinz by share of US visitors among virtual worlds targeting six to 14-year-olds with traffic up 329% year on year. It has 700,000 subscribers and more than 12m active users mostly in the US and Canada.

For all the hype about Second Life as a destination for wired adults, the numbers, revenues and reach are small compared to the likes of Club Penguin and other kids and young adult virtual worlds such as Whyville and Habbo Hotels.

Kids have their own media channels about which most adults – parents excepted - know little, they change as they grow up and woe betide any brand that appears in an inappropriate environment.

Engaging with the toy and game consumer of 2010

So how does the sophisticated 21st century marketer engage with these youthful social networkers, Wii-toting gamers, SMS and IM chatterers? In the multi-channel TV subscription home where TiVo and Skyplus are as common as wireless access laptops, what do you need to know about the toy and game consumer of 2010?

The toys and games marketplace is worth an estimated £2.2 billion and understanding these tech savvy consumers and their media consumption is key to gaining a share of their pocket money.Essentially everything marketers have read about media fragmentation making it hard to reach consumers also applies to this group, only more so.

What do school children aged 7 to 15 use the internet for?

Research commissioned by BLM Azure asked 7 to 15-year-old school children what they use the internet for.

The majority of kids (86%) revealed they go online to play games and enter competitions (63%). Others (30%) search for TV programme info, 33% search for information on celebrities or TV characters, while 40% listen/download music and 52% use the internet for homework.

More than three quarters of kids surveyed (77%) spend 20 minutes or more online every day; 14% are online between 11 to 20 minutes daily; with only 6% spending ten minutes or less online every day.

More than half (54%) use the internet most days; 28% go online two to three times per week, with 12% using it once a week and only 4% admitting to using the internet less than once a week.

Children are growing up faster

Another factor that marketers need to consider is the way that this target group is growing up faster, a trend accelerated by today's tech-powered world. In the early 1990s a girl would put her doll down at age 11, now it's age seven. Traditional toys have been superseded by chip-powered entertainment epitomised by pink-coloured Nintendo.

Consumers of younger and younger ages are migrating online. Why play with a doll's house when you can sign up to Bebo, create your own home page, blog to your heart's content, make a video film on your phone and interact with friends? And these 'older-younger' consumers are growing up with bigger expectations. They want to comment, communicate and share ideas.

All of which raises the question as to why marketers still pander to some retailers' obsession with TV support - although this is also a valid criticism for some brands with much older target audiences.

Sponsorship and online proving effective

It's not true of all retailers of course. When This is Me Dolls became the sponsors of the inaugural UK Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards in November 2007, Toys R Us backed the package with additional shelf space between the awards and Christmas despite the fact the majority of the activity was based
around sponsorship and online.

The Kids Choice Awards are massive in the US and referred to as the "kids Oscars", allowing them to vote on everything from their favourite cartoons or films to TV stars and pop idols.

This UK campaign also highlighted the fact that marketers cannot rely on a single media such as TV to reach the same audiences as 15-years ago. The target group may be young but they expect the same levels of integration as their older brothers and sisters and even their parents.

The promotional package for the dolls included a package of online, TV, magazine and outdoor benefits that all supported each other. Kids could cast their vote via the Nickelodeon website where there was lots TIM activity - including a direct link to the Character Options website where a doll could be purchased.

TIM further benefited through pre-event marketing activity such as online competitions to win VIP tickets, 20-second TV ads, which ran on Nickelodeon and Sky channels, TIM branding appeared on all promotional material - outdoor ads, railway ads, tickets and online banner ads - while magazine ads
appeared in Girl Talk, Kraze Club and Mizz.

On the day there was TIM branding on the awards ceremony podium, on-screen stage video, lifesize TIM dolls mingling with the audience and branding around the auditorium.

At the heart of this work was the new key medium for this age group, the internet, which powered the consumer voting metric. Online offers not just a highly targeted mass medium but also one that is incredibly measurable and transparent.

The opportunities for advertisers

So where's the opportunity for advertisers? At the most basic level brands can buy banners, sponsorship, or even product placement on various websites. Search too, the internet's biggest growth area is also on the agenda with contextual advertising allowing brands to connect consumers straight to the buying opportunity, a recent innovation for this sector.

This is Me dolls have also used Google and Yahoo! to appear at the top of the search listings when terms such as "Bratz" or "Pussy Cat Dolls" were entered.

The real winners in this new media environment are those that manage to develop something that becomes 'social currency'. At the heart of social currency is a recognition that kids can have a positive influence on brand communications - they are both media owners and brand guardians. This has been recognised for older age groups and in the US Sony recently ran an animated commercial created by a 19-year-old who won a competition on a UGC website; Wendy's fast food chain has a tongue-in-cheek page on MySpace; MTV has its UGC 'Starzine'; and trendy trainer brand Converse solicited homemade videos, turned them into ads and exhibited them at Converse Gallery

Robosapian viral campaign

Such behaviour would be considered radical for a toy and game brand but some are taking up the challenge. Robosapian, the Character Options robot range, recently ran the UK's first viral campaign created for a toy company. The range of robotic toys includes the Roboraptor and Roboreptile toys as well as Robosapien V2, a top of the range £200 robot that pours drinks, recognises colours, rolls over, gets up, and even dances. Character Options targeted not only kids but also affluent young men of the Nuts and Monkey magazines' generation with a viral film showing a day in the life of a Robosapien V2 appealing directly to this audience. The viral succeeded in portraying the robot as a typical "lad" by showing him out in bars and nightclubs drinking and womanising!

The viral was "seeded" on sites such as Kontraband, Bore Me and Eatmail. While TV was always destined to play a major part in the launch of Robosapien, the online element created a buzz and "must have" cachet for the brand. Robosapien became the affluent lad's latest toy helping to sell in excess of 250,000 units.

Dual marketing demographic cross over

Such dual market targeting - hitting youth and older audiences - is also a key part of the launch strategy for the Dalek Sec voice changer toy. The human hybrid face from the Doctor Who range changes the voice of the wearer via a synthesiser and although originally developed for young boys has become a must-have toy for 20-something males.

Parent company Character Options teamed up with Nuts.tv, the broadcast version of weekly lads magazine to run a promotion aimed at 18 to 24 males. Entrants were asked to text in their most embarrassing stories with the best one winning a mask. Presenters demonstrated and endorsed the mask during programme links helping to drive awareness. As this demonstrates, TV can still work as the lead medium but it needs to be used in smarter ways whether for dual marketing or for targeting kids alone.

Combined effectiveness of TV and online

Scooby Doo, a perennial kids favourite and still a major licence growth brand, needed a way of promoting products in and around the Scooby Doo programme without breaking UK TV rules that ban products directly associated with a particular programme from being advertised within two hours of it going on air. The solution was an exclusive Argos promotion on Cartoon Network called Scooby Week. Cartoon Network dedicated the entire October half- term week - the most sought after advertising period in the toys and games calendar as it helps set the agenda for Christmas wishlists as well as half-term toys -to Scooby Doo programming.

Argos used TV spots to advertise individual products as well as directing consumers online for games and competitions. The results saw a huge 30% year-on-year increase in viewing for Cartoon Network, a 52% increase in sales of Scooby Doo products in Argos stores during the week of sponsorship. Better still was a 37% increase in sales for the week following the sponsorship.

An entirely different approach saw Radica Games launch its DigiMakeover toy, the interactive plug-and-play beauty salon and digital camera that plugs directly into the TV and lets girls experiment with different looks and styles.

TV was the obvious choice to generate the impact required for the launch. Toonattik, a weekend morning show on ITV1 and CITV broadcast between 7.25am and 9.25am for children aged between the ages of 4 and 11, was chosen for the hold its presenters have over the target audience. They demonstrated the DigiMakeover product live during the show and directed kids to an exclusive DigiMakeover online competition. The combination of TV and internet led to DigiMakeover selling out. Even better was the fact that due to the phenomenal success of the online game GMTV requested that they host it indefinitely.

Regulations

None of these brands is trying to become something they are not or reinvent themselves. They are simply recognising that if an audience has a voice in creating a message then its peers may engage with it. Combine the internet with traditional forms of kids marketing and you have an explosive package. All consumers not just kids are demanding that marketers allow them to define brands on their own terms. So what you have to do is let go, set your brands free and try to give the consumer some control. Brands like parents have been more reluctant to do so but if you can crack it you're onto a winner.

At a time when commercial messages to children on TV are under real pressure from regulators it makes much more sense to explore channels that are not facing the same pressure.

Brands need to make these decision not to avoid the impact of regulation but because these are the channels that the target audience is actually using. It's time for toy brands to go where the audience is and for retailers to recognise the marketing impact of digital media.