For years that not only adults are the recipients of advertising. It is studied that children, from the age of two, are able to recognize a brand For its colors and shapes.
With this in mind, children have become the goal of large companies and Marketing departments, as they are usually the ones who really choose the product to buy.
Many adults have been "brainwashed" for years to buy "such an item" because they give away "such a thing." Who has never heard or said: "Look, I bought this because they gave this away".
Well, this same washing strategy is what the companies are carrying out. They look for brands, logos, advertisements, gifts, change the shapes of the boxes, the color. In short, everything that makes children think that they want or need a certain thing. Jordi Morillas, strategy director of Morillas Brand Design explains it perfectly: “The strategy to capture children is different (to that of adults). They are a complicated audience that demands speed of reward, immediate benefit ”. That is, children see the desired object and want it for now. This is an impressive candy for companies, which must fight to enter through the eyes of our children.
As you can see in the video, the companies they hire psychologists and they carry out studies, not to elaborate a product more appropriate to the development or intelligence of the child, but to get the child to want it.
An example (there are hundreds) could be the Pocoyo series, or the Baby Einstein DVDs. At first they were sold and explained as educational series. However it has been shown that neither Baby Einstein is so beneficial, nor the psychologists who worked in the Pocoyo series were intended to make a more educational series for children, but had the mission of create a series as a seed of merchandising I was going to come later.
If you want more examples you just have to look at the toy ads with a critical look. Children smiling as if they were the happiest in the world because they have the X toy. Of course, without him they would be nobody ...
Jordi Morillas explains that the promotion is usually more important than the product itself: "Children's advertising also requires a very basic message and premium promotion regarding the product" and set as an example the Kinder egg "Children look for more toys than chocolate."
Strategies to sell products can go a long way, and they can do many things to get children to need material things and to convince adults that they really need them to be happy or to develop properly.
It is a hypothesis of mine, but I think that behavioral strategies, methods that try to convince us that children need to become independent and autonomous through separation, theories of avoiding contact, of letting them cry, of not picking up arms, etc. they are just ways of get children with displaced anxieties and needs for lack of contact and love.
To understand it, it's something like the glass of water at night. When a child wants to be with his parents at night, for whatever reason (fear, he feels lonely, he can't sleep, ...) and he sleeps in another room, he calls his parents to come with him or directly goes to the Dad and mom's room. If they deny that need and continually send him back to his room or ignore his calls, the child end up having to invent an alternative need (need displaced) to meet the original need. Ask for a glass of water, or explain a tummy ache.
Mom Dad. I need you by my side. I need your love and your contact to be safe in everyday life and learn with you. I don't have you by my side as much as I need, you don't listen to me when I call you. Since you don't fill my time, give me something to fill it with.
Video l Excerpt from the documentary "The corporation". Via l El País More information l WinRed In Babies and more l Children decisively influence the purchases we make parents l The influence of McDonalds marketing on young children l To the conquest of new consumers l Advertising bombing, target children l The self-regulation code on content and childhood, continually infringed by national television
