What do you think about marketing kids' products to parents? Need your help for a talk please!

[carriemumsnet]

I have to talk to some marketing bods tomorrow most of whom make products for children. It's not the peer to peer debate - ie kids marketing to kids - this is marketing aimed at parents but advertising kids' products. One of the questions they want me to address is whether the media can affect parents' judgement ie has an ad or campaign ever changed your mind or behaviour.

Also do you think dads respond differently to mums to marketing.

Any thoughts you might have in the next hour or so (should have written this weeks ago of course) would be most welcome.

Oh yes.

I like products that are marketed as robust and versatile while avoiding products that appear 'cheap' or seek to prematurely 'age' children.

For example I absolutely point blank refuse to buy any of those trashy Lelli Kelli shoes for mine and it's based purely on the dreadful adverts where the girls dance about like air-heads (that and the 'free' make-up for 5yr olds)

DH responds well to any toy that implies he can recapture his youth while playing with the boys. Or that has lots of buttons, lights or shoots darts/water. :o

TBH DH leaves it all to me which can be v frustrating at times.
The kids will ask for something because they have seen the ad but then I come to Mumsnet and check out what everyone else is saying about said product
So for Xmas I bought DS Skylanders and hotwheels on the wall thingy because of the comments here.

I totally agree with anklebiters. While some adverts can positively influence me, others (and Lelli Kelli is an obvious example) absolutely put me off the products.

Age appropriate, gender neutral, healthy, non-twee American crap is all good. The opposite is all pretty poor imo.

DH used to mainly just watch Sky Sports, so I don't think he got to see too many adverts for kids' products!

DS is getting quite good at saying 'Its just plastic tat' when seeing certain ads - so, yes, parental comments on adverts are clearly quite important, even when the advert is aimed at children.

Its a very difficult balance getting an ad for a product right to influence me - because I'm often put off by adverts. However, if the product is well made, durable, and doesn't fall into the category of likely to get used once and then never again, and ideally is both fun and using brain a bit as well (me, picky???? surely not!) it is more likely to get my attention (eg Brio, lego, mechano, micro scooters).

The rule of thumb in my house is that if it's advertised on TV then it's bound to be rubbish and will break quickly. We have learned the hard way with Hot Wheels. My children know this but it doesn't stop them asking, it just means that they know in advance that they won't get.

What works for me is being able to touch, see and play with products before buying. The best marketing I've seen was from Playmobil about 5 years ago. They did a series of exhibitions (we saw the Telford one) with full product ranges on display in glass cases but lots and lots of products out on tables to play with. The displays were really imaginative and true-to-life (Ds1 is now 11 and he still remembers the little Playmobil builder sitting on the Portaloo), and we ended up buying 3 or 4 small sets that day, followed by other sets at Christmas. It has to be said that my boys were all Playmobil fans anyway so we knew that they were durable, but being able to see the full range of products in real life was a huge selling point.

Even my children know that a TV or magazine advert that depicts children with "wow" faces (think Hot Wheels in particular) usually means the toy is crap.

We don't watch much TV and specifically watch CBeebies/CBBC over CITV simply to avoid the adverts. So we manage to dodge a lot of it. Obviously I see adverts on t'internet etc but that doesn't work well for new products imo: it's better to tell you about deals or new variants of a brand you already know. I'd say my buying behaviour was not really influenced by advertising: I do a lot of googling and look at product reviews around birthdays and Xmas.

I don't know about dads and mums responding differently to ads: if they're both interested and both in the market for the product it's the same. But quite often it's the mum who makes the purchase for kids' products so dads let it all wash over them unless they have to make a last-minute panic purchase. I guess in that case they would be influenced by any advertising you could get in front of them at the opportune moment.

tut tut Carrie - leaving your homework until the last minute I would never do that, me

Random thoughts: - yes I think subtle marketing can change parents judgement - but more viral/editorial type stuff than marketing. I am struggling to think of a specific instance, but the general omnipresence of (for example) nerf in various forms of media did mean that I came to understand quite how much of an object of desire/route to bragging rights at school they were.

I block most of the kids' channels that have ads on (so all things Nickelodeon, for a start) so my DC don't see quite as much, but when they are watching kids TV I am rarely with them so I don't actually see many ads. I have maintained a mantra of "everything advertised on TV is plastic tat" which had a slight hiccup when playmobil started advertising on TV, damn them and, to be fair, my DC don't often ask for things they have seen on TV.

Adverts which annoy me re-inforce my prejudices against a given product (Lelli Kelly being a prime example)

DH definitely responds to marketing suggesting that something is the latest cool toy where it is something which also appeals to him (so outdoor toys, mostly, rather than play figures and the like) and he doesn't seem to have the knee-jerk "what a waste of money" response that I have.

Huge huge thanks for this feedback - all really interesting - you'll all be stars of my talk tomorrow. Thanks

I agree that it is far, far easier for an advert to put me off something than to encourage me to buy it. The worst ads are any where girls act like vacuous air-headed bitches, flapping about and sneerily pouting (eg Lelli Kelly) and any of the boys fighting/transforming plastic robotty monster crap, with the voiceover man speaking so gruffly he clearly has testicles the size of Hampshire, and smokes 60 a day.

I don't think dads generally notice the sexism in toys so much.