Exploring the role played by children and tweens in advertising using content analysis.
Cosoi, Carmen Maria
Abstract: While children have always been one of the favorite
symbols used in advertising throughout the years, this phenomenon is
increasing constantly, as the marketing industry is focusing even more
on young emerging segments such as children and tweens. The paper aims
to explore this trendon the Romanian market, of advertising featuring
more and more children and tweens in the attempt to increase likeability
and emotional response from consumers along with identifying the product
categories or services most likely to benefit from this type of
commercials.
Key words: advertising, children, content analysis, tweens
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the golden rules of advertising says that children, animals
and sex always sell, as it has been proved over and over again that the
emotions or attraction driven by commercials featuring one of these
elements appeal to a wide audience allowing for good exposure of the
product advertised. Nevertheless, one should fairly know that these are
not symbols that can be used anytime and in any conditions. With the
rise of a fast growing segment "the new age consumer", the
focus of the entire marketing industry is moving towards this direction,
the younger segments of consumers are being put in the spot light more
and more. Research conducted in the past years revealed that children
and tweens make their debut as consumers from very early ages
(Valkenburga & Cantor, 200l) especially when it comes to product
categories that are easily available to them and do not require a
considerable investment, while at the same time are also fierce
influencers for products which do not concern them whatsoever, such as
the family car and the insurance plan for the entire household (McNeal,
1999). Having all this in mind, corroborated with the enormous emotional
response triggered by featuring children in TV commercials, advertisers
resort more and more to this technique by increasing the number of
commercials featuring children and tweens.
2. CHILDREN, TWEENS AND ADVERTISING
Toddlers, children and tweens represent the main attractions in
terms of TV commercials and because of the positive reaction triggered,
it is highly important to measure the level of this phenomenon on the
Romanian market. Although, the importance of the tweens and children
segments is constantly growing, the Romanian market is still at an early
stage compared to countries such as United States or United Kingdom
where this phenomenon is taking everybody by storm.
Children and especially tweens nowadays represent a highly
important segment for marketers due to three main reasons: they dispose
of increasingly large amounts of money which qualify them as an
important primary market, will grow and develop into mature consumers
ensuring a loyal future market, they have started to develop brand
loyalty at an early age, positive attitudes that will most likely last
until adulthood for certain brands and last but not least, are powerful
influencers for the household purchases in general.
At the same time, the marketing activities and especially
advertising continues to expand in Romania, as constantly ways of
improving the brand performance are sought after. Consequently,
children/tweens find themselves casted in an heavily increasing number
of commercials due to the characteristics described above, but also
since the public's reaction in general is a very good one which
helps cutting through the clutter and increase the attractiveness of the
commercials. Although, it is easy to observe that this phenomenon of
commercials featuring children and tweens is developing consistently,
however the exact extent was not yet quantified, nor did the product
categories more likely to resort to this technique.
Children and tweens being features in advertisings do not only
influence the main decision makers, meaning parents, but also peak the
curiosity and interest of their pears in the respective brand, creating
awareness and most likely consideration. From now on, in case the
product is suitable for the children and tween segment, the young viewer
will process the information received through the ad and become
persuaded to buy the product, or in case it is related to products or
services not aimed at this target, will start play their role as
influencers. Having all this in mind, quantifying and understanding the
penetration rate of commercials featuring children and tweens along with
analyzing their content represents an important aspect that will provide
valuable information on how to better apply it, while at the same time
build awareness among parents related to the size of this phenomenon so
as to take decisions in the future in the best interest of their
children.
Previous research focused mainly on providing information on the
number of hours/minutes of commercials targeted at children and the
ratio of air space filled by these ads during airing time that was
addressed to this audience. Kotz & Story, in a similar experiment
conducted in 1994, quantify the number of commercials aired during
Saturday morning children's programming so as to identify the
number of advertisings for food items.
The approach used for this paper aims at providing a broader view,
as the author will be focusing on analyzing the whole spectrum of TV
programs, not only the shows addressed to children, coveting both
weekdays and weekends in order to identify the commercials featuring
children, toddlers and tweens, quantify them and conduct a content
analysis so as to reveal the product categories most appropriate for
featuring children and tweens along with the elements with the highest
penetration. The goal of this research is to see past the commercials
addressing children and featuring children and tweens as actors and try
and capture the extent of the phenomenon of them being distributed in
ads exclusively due to their increasing influence over the family
acquisitions. All these actions determine children and tweens to mature
quickly as consumers due to increased exposure to marketing activities
in general and commercials and materials featuring children their age,
that make the materials more approachable and in the end more memorable.
3. RESEARCH DESIGN
The research technique applied was content analysis of commercials
featuring children and tweens, ads aired by the number one TV station in
Romania, Pro TV with a market share of 14,1% (ARMA-GFK Romania). During
four days, comprising a mix of week days (Wednesday and Thursday) and
weekends (Saturday and Sunday) in November 2010 all the programming
aired by Pro TV between 8 am and l0 pm (the hour interval most
appropriate for this age segment) were recorded and stored on the
computer by using a TV tuner, resulting in 56 hours of recording.
The information was gather by covering the following areas: day of
ad broadcast, the hour interval when the commercial broadcast accrued,
the ad duration, the product category or service, the brand and if the
product was addressed to children or tweens.
4. RESULTS
Out of the 784 minutes of commercials recorder during the 4 days,
47% featured children or tweens, proving that indeed this segment can
somehow associated with a gold mine for advertising, since keeps viewers
in front of the TV and more interested in purchasing the product or
service (see table 1 and 2).
The hypothesis according to which children and tweens are being
casting advertising, not only for products and services that are
designed for them is also validated, as actually the large majority of
commercials featuring children or tweens refer to other types of
products and services for which they are not the decision makers (78%).
(see table 3).
Food products and especially confectionary, represent the area most
inclined for including children or tweens in their advertising,
regardless of the type of product: for adults only or also appropriate
for children and tweens. Overall food items account for 74% of the
commercials, while toys or other services designed for children and
tweens are in minority. This situation reinforces the belief that
children's and tweens' eating habits could be heavily
influenced due to the behavioral displayed in commercials, especially
for less healthy products such as sweets, and drinks with high content
of sugar.
In terms of children and tweens acting as triggers for parents by
stirring the emotional side and determining them to consider purchasing
the respective items, confectionary rank first, followed by laundry detergents and even insurance and banking services
5. CONCLUSION
The current research proved that children and tweens prove to be
highly cast in commercials across categories due to their influence over
the family's purchases.
Besides mainly identifying and evaluating in more depth the
triggers that make children and tweens one of the most desired symbols
in TV advertising, further research should focus on identifying the ways
in which childrens' and tweens' exposure to commercials
featuring actors their own age is influencing their behavior and
development as consumers on the long terms along with the reaction on
the short term in terms of driving purchase for the respective product
or service.
6. REFERENCES
Acuff, Dan. S (2000), What Kids buy and why, Simon & Schuster,
ISBN 0-684-83448-0
Carstea, M, (2010), Whom and How to research Online? Methodological
consequences in using the new data collection techniques, PR Trends,
29-31 October 2010, Cluj Napoca
Edmond, S, (2006) Advertising to children: a changing media
landscape, Young Consumers, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 8-12.
Kotz, K & Story, M (1994), Food advertisings during children
"s Saturday morning television programming: Are they consistent
with dietary recommendations? Journal of American Dietetic Associations,
94, 1296-1300
Valkenburga, P. M., Cantor J. The development of a child into a
consumer, Applied Developmental Psychology 22 (2001) 61-72)
***(2010) ARMA- Romanian Association for Audience Measurement,
Accessed on: 2010-11-18
Tab. 1. The structure of the recorded minutes
Number of
Total number of commercials
Total number of commercials minutes featuring
recorded minutes minutes children or tweens
3360 min 784 min 371 min
Tab. 2. Structure of recorded commercials
Commercials Commercials
featuring not featuring
Recorded children or children of
commercials tweens tweens
Total 2128 1001 1127
number commercials commercials commercials
Percentage 100% 47% 53%
Tab. 3. Structure of recorded commercials featuring children or
tweens
Commercials Not
featuring Addressed to addressed to
children or children and children and
tweens tweens tweens
Total 1001 222 778
number commercials commercials commercials
Percentage 100% 22% 78%
Tab. 4. Main product categories addressed to children and
tweens featuring them in the advertising
Product categories Percentage
Confectionary 45%
Juice/ still drinks 16%
Breakfast cereals 13%
Games and toys 10%
Media: Comic books/books/movies 9%
Other 7%
Total 100%
Tab. 5. Main product categories not addressed to children and
tweens featuring them in the advertising
Product categories Percentage
Confectionary 26%
Laundry detergents 16%
Insurance and banking services 15%
Savory products 13%
Telecom services and handsets 10%
Automotive 6%
Pet food 5%
Personal care products 3%
Other 6%
Total 100%