Experiential marketing for kids involves following the best practice guidelines and seeking innovative solutions based on appropriate content and knowledge that will add value to both the message and the brand.
Communicating with kids is a big challenge and a huge responsibility for brands. As key influencers to their parents buying decisions, children are being increasingly influenced by commercialism. The growing concerns that children are being pushed too fast into the adult, commercial world, has led the government and industry bodies to fight for better child advertising standards and regulations. So the big question for brands is: how do you market products to children in a responsible way?
Last year, the Bailey Review ‘Letting Children be Children’ recommended self-regulatory codes regarding the use of children as brand ambassadors and in peer-to-peer marketing. The initiative called for the regulatory bodies, such as ASA and the Committee of Advertising Practise (CAP), to introduce best practice guidelines and ensure that marketing to children is conducted responsibly.
Although kids informally engage in peer-to-peer marketing of products and brands they like, the Bailey Review made a series of recommendations based on parents’ concerns of brands paying or rewarding children to promote their products at school, or on social networks. To ensure that children continue to be protected, brands need to find new ways to appeal to this group differently, based on elements that will help them grow healthily, act responsibly and become better citizens. So, how do brands push the right buttons to entice a child or a parent to buy without crossing the line?
The benefits of real world, immersive experiences
Children are exposed to a large amount of advertising and marketing messages across lots of different media, which are mostly directed at adults. They have become a captive audience not only to traditional forms of media, but even more so to the new digital media made readily accessible through the internet, computers and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Given the extensive number of brands with similar offerings targeting this audience, it can be difficult to make a product standout and grasp the attention of kids.
Whilst some brands are making good use of online strategies such as the creation of advergames and animated content to engage with kids, in order to capture the attention of this audience, it is crucial to offer them a positive social experience, creating something that is unique, innovative and mostly important, fun. Hotcow’s award winning Honey Monster campaign exemplifies this perfectly. Designed specifically to raise awareness and drive trial to the cereal brand, Hotcow created a live event campaign teamed with traditional sampling and an immersive family experience at UK shopping centres. People got the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world we created by choosing to have a photo with the brand’s iconic character, taking a product sample from the giant cereal box or playing our “waffle wacker” game to win a prize.
When it comes to promoting consumer goods for children, providing a healthy experience where kids can interact directly with the brand and have the opportunity to see a product and experience it for themselves is the best form of marketing. A great example of an immersive experience is the experiential campaign for Tang Re-mix in Argentina. In a very innovative way, Tang invited kids to a roller coster ride where they could place their favourite Tang Re-Mix flavours in steady cups and let the roller coaster shake up their drinks until the end of the ride.
Ultimately, encouraging children to use imagination and creativity can add value to a brand. It is all about giving kids short stories to recount, using contextual settings and content based on an informed and responsible understanding of the audience. In this way, you are able to create spontaneous emotional bonds with those who were impacted by the message and the activity.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning Experiential Marketing agency. We get brands in front of consumers in ways that persuade them to buy. We fully implement our ideas; nothing needs to be farmed out. For more information or free consultation, contact us.