Firms look at 'branding' kids before age 5

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Kids want brands as soon as they talk.

ALTHOUGH young children are more interested in Dora than Dior, a new study concludes that marketers of such adult-oriented products as perfume, cosmetics and toiletries should be targeting children before they even turn five, in order to build lifetime brand recognition.

Reporting in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, researchers say exposure to brands at a younger age significantly increases familiarity later in life -- often, with people more quickly recognizing defunct brands to which they were exposed as kids than existing brands introduced to them as adults.

"It's a message we might not feel entirely comfortable with, but it may well be worth making young children familiar with brand names, even if they won't purchase those products until they're older," says study co-author Andrew Ellis, a professor of psychology at York University in England.

"This can be done through advertising in children's programs or through product placement."

The study, funded by consumer products manufacturer Unilever, involved experiments with participants aged 19 to 83, and measured such things as speed of brand-recognition and familiarity with the types of products a brand represents.

Ellis says brands introduced to participants as kids ("certainly before the age of five, and often before 10"), scored higher in recognition and product familiarity than those brands learned later in life. Among participants aged 50 to 83, now-defunct brands familiar to them as young people had more resonance than existing brands that weren't around when they were growing up.

"The things we process fluently get more positive emotional responses. ...So all things being equal, you're more likely to be favourably disposed to a brand you've known all your life than one you've encountered more recently," Ellis says.

The study is the latest entry in a growing body of research that, controversially, empowers marketers to court children, and even infants.

For example, knowing that young people are 350 per cent more responsive to the five senses than adults, cartoon-emblazoned scented diapers were introduced to boost recall among so-called "crib consumers."

"Children are requesting brands as soon as they can speak," says Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "I've talked to plenty of parents whose child's first word was Coke or Elmo or Nemo."

The average kindergarten student can recognize some 300 logos. And at just six weeks, a baby can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots.

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 24, 2009 B7