Agnes Nairn, a Business School Professor and co-author of Consumer Kids, will be responding to a review on marketing practices using children and would love to hear your views and of any experiences you've had.
Last July the Bailey Review, Letting Children be Children recommended to government that "the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and other advertising and marketing bodies should urgently explore whether, as many parents believe, the advertising self-regulatory codes should prohibit the employment of children under the age of 16 as brand ambassadors or in peer-to-peer marketing - where people are paid, or paid in kind, to promote products, brands and services."
An example of this would be when Mattel recruited 7 year old girls online to promote Barbie Girls MP3 players to their friends and gave them rewards based on the intensity of their marketing activity. Or the 7 year old twins recently employed by Weetabix to promote the cereal ?on their most active days.? These recruitment activities are sometimes online where children are given incentives to 'like'? products on Facebook or write positive blogs and comments about a brand.
In response to the Bailey Review, some parts of the advertising industry have created a voluntary best practice code but CAP has just launched a review to find out if the ban should be formally put into its self-regulatory code along with the other advertising rules and regulations.
· Should this ban be part of the advertising self-regulatory code (which means industry, including the Advertising Standards Authority) imposes sanctions on companies who break the ban)?
· Should it be completely illegal?
· Should there just be a voluntary code which promotes a ban but does not enforce it?
· Or should there be no ban at all?
· What do you think about under 16s promoting products in this way?