Digital Marketing to "Generation SpongeBob" (Dreammachine Kids)

Dreammachine | Rue Auguste Frison 56, 6040 Jumet (Charleroi) | +32 (0) 10 86 12 42 | www.dreammachine.be | 12 april 2023 Dreammachine presentation, p. 1

Digital Marketing to Generation SpongeBob

Gerda Van Damme – Guido Janssens (Dreammachine)Gerrit Vandendriessche (Altius)

Digital Marketing First, Oct 17 2013


Topics

• Dreammachine & Dreammachine Kids• Description of the audience: kids• Description of the audience: parents• Importance of kids marketing• Kids on digital media• Usability• Ethical considerations• Legal Framework (Gerrit Vandendriessche - Altius)


Digital marketing agency

New business unit starting from Jan 2014: Digital Marketing to Kids

ABOUT DREAMMACHINE


Brands are among the first words children read.

KIDS


Development: 6 – 8

Brain development

Identify brands

Boys and girls

Not be childish

Between 6 to 8 years old, the left hemisphere of the brain starts to develop more than the right one. It directs itself away from the pure fantasy into the ‘real world’, the child gets an aversion of everything that could be ‘childish’, and girls and boys difference gets more and more evident.


Kids grow old young

At this age we also that kids start to imitate the adult world, the so called ‘Kids Grow Old Young’ – tendency. In the following years of the child’s development, this trend will get more intense. And of course, this intensifies the boy-girl contrast.


Development: 8 – 11

Brand loyalty

Social influence

Neurological growth

• Starting from 8 years, children start really looking at brands, and develop a brand loyalty, which can last until the end of his life. He also starts taking more and more in account the behavior of his friends.

• Approaching 12 years, their brain starts evolving towards the adolescent stage, which will change their life completely. But attention, at this age their attention curve is still much shorter than the curve of an adult.


Technological context

Offline + online

Continuously connected

Devices are everywhere

This generation lives in a completely new technological context. The rate of innovations has doubled during their lifetimes. They are continuously connected, and a complete mix of ‘analog’ and ‘on-line’ objects – such as this ‘monopoly zapped’, combining a classical monopoly with extensions on the Ipad, is standard.


Values

Rules and roles

Peers, friends & family

Self-esteem

Engagement

Fame: “Dreams are just a YouTube video away”

The values of this age group are very different from older and younger children:- First of all, they want to comply to the rules and

know their own role within their group, their family, and so on.

- The acceptance by peers – their friends, their family - is getting the main drive of everything they do

- They want to have success. They see on YouTube that children of their age can have a lot of success and they’re convinced that they can achieve this too.

- And finally they want to pursue global values. Climate change, hunger, equal rights are hot topics for them.


Content

RACECARS

FUTURE

PAST

BOYS & GIRLS

FAMILY

HUMOR

TABOO, SCATOLOGY

MAGIC

DANGER ADVENTURE

OUTER SPACE

POP STARS

OCEAN

DINOSCELEBRITIES

FASHION

PIRATES


Fear, love and hope

PARENTS


Anxious parents

ANXIETY TO BE BAD PARENTS

RISK SOCIETY

TOTAL CONTROLPARENTS ARE FRIENDS

STUDY PRESSUREDEMANDING KIDS

MOBILE KIDS

Parents of this generation of parents have fear that their children are not sleeping right or developing right. They see risks everywhere. On the other hand, they don’t want to be authoritarian , they see their children as their friends. But in the same time they are obsessed and demanding with academic education.


Most active and lasting bindings to a brand are established before the age of 16.

IMPORTANCE


Importance

Influence kids-related goods

Influence family purchases

Pester power

Website choices

Research has proven that the age of the children influences which sites their mother visit, to stick with the main interests of their family (IAB).


Kids expect digital media to entertain them.

KIDS ON DIGITAL MEDIA


What do they do?

• Search• Play• Socialize• Watch video / listen to music• Shop• Read magazines

Shift from offline toys towards online ‘toys’ (games and communities) around the age of 6-8.

At home, out of sight. Online = babysitter.


Kids and online ads

• Banner blindness grows with online experience• Until 8-9: literal interpretation.• 9+: marketing should be entertaining.• Hot mediums for kids are TV and online

How?• Feel only addessed when “it’s for me”.• Personalize!• Give control• Complexity, magic, exageration, coolness• Heroes & characters


Games

They guarantee:• Interaction with your brand• Fun & positive exposure of your brand• Repetition of exposure • Long attention towards your brand

Address the child in an adapted way:• Put the child central• Reward him as often as you can• Let him win as many easy levels as possible• Let him compete with his pears


Education

Kids and parents use Online for education• For flemish kids, Google is as important as

parents for getting information (De Standaard, 16/10/2013)

• Websites like brainchild.com, and countless apps tap repeatedly into the parents educational obsession


Kids social Media

There are a lot of social network sites for children. Most of them are dependent of an off-line brand.Some of them direct themselves to a subgroup, like Barbie, some of them have a wider audience, like Club Pinguin, which is part of Disney.Most of them offer a combination of chat and other communication tools with games.

This type of sites target the children as well as their parents:- The children themselves, which have to make a

simple profile- Via their parents, who have to make a profile to

approve the subscription of their child. They then dispose of a kind of parental control board in which they can follow their children.


Adults social Media

There is an enormous amount of children beneath 13 on adult social media such as Facebook – 13 is the official minimum age for Facebook.They disguised themselves with a false age (remember ‘Kids grow old Young’), mostly with an agreement of their parents. They are very difficult to target because of their false age but you can find loads of them on fan pages like Spongebob – with 44 million fans, or fanpages for toys for small children.


Social Media

The growth of kids participation in social media has been enormous from 2007 until 2011, but now we see that the last years adherence of children in general is diminishing, in favor of several types of instant messaging.


“I don’t know where I can go on this website.”

USABILITY


Get the basics right

Children (Ages 3-12 Years)

on the Web, 3rd ed.

By R. Budiu and Jakob Nielsen

If the usability broken for adults, the site won’t work for kids.

But... Usability research is outdated by definition.


4 basic usability rules

Kids are NOT technically savvy

Kids want instant gratification

Kids want to see tailored content

You will be punished for bad usability

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Analysis of an example...

Benetton Kids CommunityIn 2012 Benetton has launched an online hub ‘Benetton Kids Community’, dedicated to and aimed at digital-savvy kids and their parents.


Confusion...

Video: see next slide

What we see is that the boy needs about 3 minutes to find the first game. So what went wrong?


4 usability axioms

Kids are NOT tech savvy1


Show users where you are in the website structure

Website header is different at each visit of the homepage: leads to confusion.


Have clear real-life illustrations with call-to-actions.

For call to actions, children need clear real-life illustrations.At the left button, you see a link to recipes, but they are illustrated with flowers, birds and snails instead of cooking devices.Superman doesn’t lead to a game, but to color plates. It should at least show a pencil on top.


Text should be > 14 (12) pt and well contrasted

• All text is very small • Some text is written white on yellow • Navigation texts are as small


4 usability axioms

instant gratification2


Children will always chose ‘PLAY’

Kids will never click on ‘how to play’, but immediately on ‘play’. The instructions should be behind the play button during the game.


‘Fatal error’

Here we see the path you have to go through to get to the nearest game in the site. After a whole quest to gets to the games section, the child gets on a page saying ‘no plugin installed’. There is no gratification at all, this gives a very negative brand image towards the child. Note: on this computer the latest version of Flash and Java where both installed. No plugin download was proposed either.


4 usability axioms

show tailored content3


Separate content for different target users. Make it clear where to go.

for preschoolers for parents (sign up)

for parents (pdf)

Intended for kids


“Not for me”

You should avoid the ‘not for me’-experience. The videos are for preschoolers, while the games are rather for elder kids. When a child clicks on ‘how it works’, he gets an adult-layouted page with an ‘adult’ text.


“For me?” Avoid pdf.

Avoid pdf where possible. It’s a technical environment the children do not know.


4 usability axioms

if not... you will be punished4


Result: mainly appealing to mothers

For example, in the Benneton community we see at the picture gallery that the real audience are mothers of preschoolers and that the rest of the audience almost doesn’t participate in the website.


So think before you start!

Kids are NOT technically savvy

Kids want instant gratification

Kids want to see tailored content

You will be punished for bad usability

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“A magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work” – 1 year old baby.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS


‘Compensation marketing’

• Ad awareness?• ‘Unhealthy’ food marketing• “Reprogramming” of the

child’s brain• Loss of real social contact• Loss of ‘essential

capacities’• Unhealthy lifestyle (inside,

sitting)• Violent games• Web unsafety

• Sector agreements: Codes of conduct

• Brands inciting to play outside, have ‘unplugged’ experiences

• Brands stimulating to play together

• Brands teaching about healthy food, etc.


Legal issues of kids marketing

Gerrit VandendriesschePartner at ALTIUS lawyersBrussels

LEGAL ISSUES


Legal checklist

In our series of

conferences about

on-line kids

marketing, a

conference by Gerrit

Vandendriessche is

foreseen on February

6, 2014.

• Which child?• Data protection• Direct marketing• No misleading advertising• No agressive advertising• Promotional games • Sector specific laws• Sector specific codes of conduct


Legal conference

This conference,

organized by

Dreammachine Kids,

will be given by Gerrit

Vandendriessche on

February 6, 2014 in

the offices from Altius

(Tour & Taxis)

“Legal issues of digital marketing towards children: what you might do as a parent but cannot do as an advertiser.”• This seminar will present the most common legal

issues when engaging in digital marketing towards children.

• It will deal with– the processing of the data of children,– how you can engage in direct marketing towards children,– which advertising claims are not allowed when interfacing

with children,– how on-line promotional games for children can be

organized, etc.


Subscribe for our free whitepapers and ask your invitations to our more in depth seminars by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. Seats are limited!

Free 2 hour conferences will be given from December to April in Brussels or Jumet (Charleroi Nord) about the following subjects :

Usability for kids: what every advertiser should be aware of.

Legal issues of digital marketing towards children: what you might do as a parent but cannot do as an advertiser.

Generation SpongeBob: let your digital marketing strategy tap into this generation’s characteristics and digital media consumption.

Digital trends for advertisers to kids: 2014 trends and cases.

Do you have digital marketing projects or do you need guidance for your digital marketing strategy? Ask for a meeting! 010/86 12 42, [email protected].

CLOSURE

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Charleroi

Brussels

Charleroi

Charleroi

Dec 19th 2014

Feb 6th 2014

Feb 27th 2014

April 3rd 2014

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]