The Marriage of Psychology and Marketing

To effectively market to children, advertisers need to know what makes kids tick. With the help of well-paid researchers and psychologists, advertisers now have access to in-depth knowledge about children’s developmental, emotional and social needs at different ages. Using research that analyzes children’s behaviour, fantasy lives, art work, even their dreams, companies are able to craft sophisticated marketing strategies to reach young people.

The issue of using child psychologists to help marketers target kids gained widespread public attention in 1999, when a group of U.S. mental health professionals issued a public letter to the American Psychological Association (APA) urging them to declare the practice unethical. The APA is currently studying the issue.

Building Brand Name Loyalty

Canadian author Naomi Klein tracks the birth of “brand” marketing in her 2000 book No Logo.According to Klein, the mid-1980s saw the birth of a new kind of corporation—Nike, Calvin Klein,Tommy Hilfiger, to name a few—which changed their primary corporate focus from producing products to creating an image for their brand name. By moving their manufacturing operations to countries with cheap labour, they freed up money to create their powerful marketing messages. It has been a tremendously profitable formula, and has led to the creation of some of the most wealthy and powerful multi-national corporations the world has seen.

Marketers plant the seeds of brand recognition in very young children, in the hopes that the seeds will grow into lifetime relationships. According to the Center for a New American Dream, babies as young as six months of age can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. Brand loyalties can be established as early as age two, and by the time children head off to school most can recognize hundreds of brand logos. While fast food, toy and clothing companies have been cultivating brand recognition in children for years, adult-oriented businesses such as banks and automakers are now getting in on the act.

Buzz or Street Marketing

The challenge for marketers is to cut through the intense advertising clutter ( 杂乱) in young people’s lives. Many companies are using “buzz marketing” —a new twist on the tried-and-true “word of mouth” method. The idea is to find the coolest kids in a community and have them use or wear your product in order to create a buzz around it. Buzz, or “street marketing,” as it’s also called, can help a company to successfully connect with the elusive ( 难找的) teen market by using trendsetters to give them products “cool” status.

Buzz marketing is particularly well-suited to the Internet, where young “Net promoters” use chat rooms and blogs to spread the word about music, clothes and other products among unsuspecting users.

Commercialization in Education

School used to be a place where children were protected from the advertising and consumer messages that permeated their world—but not anymore. Budget shortfalls ( 亏空，差额) are forcing school boards to allow corporations access to students in exchange for badly needed cash, computers and educational materials.