Advertising to Pre School Children

[smithy100]

Has anyone else seen or what do you think of..
The latest issue of the Bob the Builder magazine? Under the free gift (which is a digger) is a promotional DVD for Butlins Holiday parks. My 4yr old thought it was his free gift and had to watch it. The DVD is a full on promotion DVD for Butlins - he now thinks he wants to go on holiday there and not that there is anything wrong with the holiday parks (although I haven't been) - but isn't this full on pester power .
Full page adverts I can deal with they are all part of a magazine, even TV ads don't really worry me that much, I can turn them off. But a DVD cover-mounted under the gift on a pre School BBC magazine - come on, too much.

YANBU it is is , they know that these dvds will want to be watched by the children whose magazine is for and most probably will want to go there, so there you go instant consumers.

I'm surprised at that. I used to work for BBC Worldwide and in my day (aged crone emoticon) this would have been problematic as I would think that a covermount such as this could be perceived as endorsement.

But then standards have clearly been slipping - e.g. the Gavin and Stacey DVD on sale before the series finished on BBC1. Tsk tsk cats bum mouth

YANBU

I took the kids on holiday to a Haven site when they were younger and we enjoyed it that much that I booked again for the following year. When we went back there was so much emphasis on promoting/advertising for you to buy your own caravan that it became really annoying. You couldn't even go the toilet without seeing posters FCS.

I though that was bad enough but the dvd is way too much and is even worse as it's directly aimed at young children.

my ds was given something via the school promoting a website to do with learning about money - it was sponsered by nationwide and displayed their logo prominently - i felt this was wrong immediately

YANBU - try writing to them and telling them that you find it objectionable for children to be mislead this way. If they get a few letters, they may reconsider doing it again.

What used to really piss me off was the number of DS's magazines/comics where the free gift was a sticker album and your first pack of stickers. Oh goody, a free gift that could cost me loads of money, how very kind

thanks for comments I've sent an email to the magazine - lets see if they have a comment.

Meanwhile have to break the news to 4yr old DS that we won't be going to Butlins on holiday this year

Hi This is the response I had from BBC

'Thank you for your email. I am sorry to hear you were disappointed with the Butlins DVD that was distributed with Bob the Builder magazine however we are grateful that you took the time to let us know your view as it is hugely important for us to get feedback from our readers.

As you know, we include advertising within our children?s magazines and the revenue that this generates helps us to keep our cover prices competitive. However, we take our responsibilities in regard to advertising and children very seriously and we have strict guidelines in place to ensure that the advertising placed around children?s content is appropriate and safe for our young audience.

I have passed your comments to the publisher of Bob the Builder and she will review them with the advertising team who work on our children?s magazines and discuss whether we continue to carry promotional DVDs in the future. We particularly note that you felt that the artwork appealed directly to your son. In this instance, we had taken the decision to distribute the Butlins DVD on condition that the DVD cover was not displayed on the magazine before purchase, so that it wouldn?t be mistaken for an extra gift and would only be seen when the product was opened (which in our experience is often done by the parent). For this reason in particular, your feedback is useful to us and we?ll bear it in mind when making decisions about advertising in our pre-school magazines in the future'.

bloody hell keeo their prices competitive I find that the kids mags are more expensive than my own

But pre-school children are advertised to all the time. Most programmes on children's telly are largely funded by toy companies, and designed to sell toys - it's no accident that Postman Pat now has a helicopter.

IMHO this is much worse as it is hidden advertising, and many parents are under the mistaken assumption that stuff like CBeebies is non-commercial.

But it wouldn't really bother me if a child asks for something they've seen on an ad - you can always say no. And ads are necessary to fund lots of things.

I feel that they have tried to hide very explicit advertising. If Butlins target audience is parents then I suggest they put the DVD on a parenting magazine, not on a childrens magazine which just generates full on pester power

What annoys me is that pre school children will not make the distinction between advertising and a gift and nor will many adults. For that reason their decision to hide the DVD was disingenuous. If it was visible, parents could have made their own mind up whether it would affect their purchase decision. Maybe the real reason they hid it was they didn't want it to affect sales.

I don't think it would have been as bad if it had been a free Bob the Builder DVD sponsored by Butlins. But not full on sales promotional DVD, it was just too much.