• BrandChannel, The Australian, Tuesday, July 28, 2009 10:36 AM

Kids start talking about what they like at age 3 and that's when you should start marketing to them, Lisa Mancuso, Fisher-Price's SVP of marketing, tells Vivienne Manning-Schaffel. That's not to say that mom is out of the equation -- of course not, she controls the purse stings -- but she doesn't have a lot of extraneous time or money in this day and age. It's more efficient to consult with the child and let them make the buying decision in categories that are appropriate, points out Dave Siegel, president of Wonder Group and co-author of Marketing to the New Super Consumer Mom & Kid.

"You have to understand what your product category is, where your product is going to deliver and so forth," says Greg Livingston, Siegel's co-author. "Sometimes the packaging, and branding element calls for 75% kid and 25% mom. It all depends on the target child's age and product category."

Meanwhile, a report that is slated to be released at a seminar in Australia on the sexualization of children in marketing finds that although teenagers may claim they are immune to marketing messages, ads are getting through to them on a subconscious level, Simon Canning reports in The Australian. Furthermore, both parents and children seem to have difficulty distinguishing between what is advertising and what is not in the digital media world.

Melbourne University researcher Cordelia Fine cites the example of a mother whose daughter plays a lot of games on a Barbie Web site. "I asked her if it made her daughter want to buy lots of Barbie items and the mother responded: 'Well, there isn't any advertising on the site,'" Fine says .

Read the whole story at BrandChannel, The Australian »