Grooming Children for Profit

[Joanne98]

Agnes Nairn is co-author of Consumer Kids: How big business is grooming our children for profit. She spoke to Samia Aziz about how children are targeted and manipulated by today’s corporate marketing strategies, and the social and psychological impacts of this rapidly intensifying phenomenon.

Tell us a bit about the origins of the way in which companies target children and young people. Has there been a gradual increase in intensity of marketing strategies, or have there been points at which rapid shifts have taken place?

Children have, of course, always constituted a market for toys, sweets and comics. Three things have changed. Firstly, children are spending more in their own right. They now buy electronics, branded clothes and cosmetics and are increasingly discerning as consumers. Part of the reason for this is that they have more disposable income. There is a very recent trend away from regular pocket money and towards ad-hoc handouts. This is influenced by rising divorce rates so that children are not always in the same household at the same time each week and it’s easier for parents just to give their kids a bit of cash. Grandparents now also give out over £2bn annually to their grandchildren. Secondly, more marketing is targeted directly at children. The rise of digital technology has certainly marked a point at which this targeting has been accelerated. It is now incredibly easy and cheap to reach young people directly through their favourite websites including social networking sites and gaming sites. The third thing that has changed is the “influence market” – children now have more of a say in family purchases such as TVs, computers and even cars. Young people are often the “technology experts” in families with much greater knowledge about what’s on the market than their parents. So marketing campaigns which would previously have been aimed squarely at parents are now also created with a child audience in mind.

Could you describe how marketing campaigns play out in different social contexts - how does an advertising campaign aimed at young working class consumers differ from one aimed at middle class consumers? Do companies appeal to class-based insecurities and prejudices in order to sell their products?

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