adVENT: kids toy adverts at Christmas
It's Christmas, in case you hadn't noticed, and while cheer, joy and goodwill to all men is being spread far and wide, everyone has a little grumble at this time of year as well. The Drum has invited some of those heading up some of the UK's finest media and marketing communications companies to share their pet hates that annoy them in their jobs at this time of year, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek.
Stuart Bowden, managing director of MEC
Pig goes pop! Oh yes it does. I don’t fully know how or even why it does but my children are dangerously fixated on the idea of having a popping pig for Christmas. A quick glance at Amazon reveals PGP! to be a toy of such preternatural rubbishness that the ratings system struggles to express the levels of disappointment it has produced in previous purchasers. Never the less a parcel is on its way from China to my house via a large Amazon storage depot/tax haven where it will have the briefest of stays in my living room before arriving at its final resting place in a landfill site just outside of Bicester. Thanks very much adverts in children’s TV, my Christmas media nemesis.
At this special time of year the hard rotation of kids advertising reaches a whole new level as it takes full advantage of the extra hour of sole access to my children that peak hangover season offers. The ruthless consumerist agenda that this this sets is so powerful that letters to Santa are pretty much redundant, he may as well just get ask my TV team for a list of spot times from CITV and get on with it. At this special time of year The Disney Channel performs a masterclass in integrated marketing as it effortlessly segues from show to product. They manage this complicated maneuver with such finesse that my daughter is entirely unable to disentangle her interest in Sophia the First’s adventures from a nagging sense that were she to own what looks like the universe’s most casually designed and constructed amulet toy (£19.99) she might actually appear in the show. I can’t help thinking that it is only legislation that prevents Disney selling cosmetic surgery to girls to help them perfect the goggle-eyed stare and tiny hipped stance of their heroines.
At election time Government Departments voluntarily enter into Purdah, agreeing not to communicate so as not to influence voters, in many countries opinion polls are also banned immediately before the vote. This is designed to prevent ‘norming’, the herd mentality effect that urges us on to act in the same way as the majority of our fellow citizens. Could it be time for a similar pre-Christmas blackout of advertising aimed at children? Such a move could allow them a fighting chance at rational consideration of the presents they really want as opposed to rushing to weigh options by advertising frequency and just selecting the top 10.
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for in this regard. The Christmas kids advertising frenzy is, after all, the only time when my children have some curiosity about what it is that I do between breakfast and bedtime. Admittedly their grasp of the nuances of media planning is imperfect but for a week or so a year they really seem to want to know if I make the Pigs themselves, decide which episode of Scooby Doo they appear in, write the script for Baby Jake or if perhaps, just perhaps, I actually know Sofia personally and can help them get them get their big break on her show.
Stuart Bowden is managing director of MEC and a soon-to-be proud owner of a Sophia the First doll from Disney.
Yesterday's adVENT message was delivered by Jim Dowling, managing partner of Cake.