To me, marketing has always been a double-edged sword. When I was first exposed to it in my high school marketing class I was extremely attracted to the idea of market research; How strategic portrayal and positioning of your product towards a certain demographic can lead to increased sales, brand loyalty, advocacy, the works. What really bugged me, and still bugs me to this day is how I feel many marketers seem to over-exaggerate their products, seemingly brainwashing consumers into a certain obsession for a product that is much less exciting than actually depicted.
I found this especially prominent when toy companies market to kids. I vividly recall seeing a commercial for Lego “Bionicles”. The advertisements depicted the powerful “Bionicle” toys fighting immense monsters with awesome weapons. The advertisement would run every time there was a commercial break (approximately one third of a supposed 30 minute TV show was devoted to advertisements) which peeved me quite a bit. After seeing that “Bionicle” commercial in midst of my regular Saturday morning cartoons the ten year old me begged my parents to let me buy a “Bionicle”.
Seeing the success of the original six “Bionicles”, marketers decided to surround the toys with a mediocre storyline and proceed to push out several more generations of “Bionicle” toys and books. Well, it definitely worked on the young and naive Michael So. By the time I was twelve, I had collected all six of the original “Bionicles”, 4 of the second generation of bionicles, and their whole series of six novels that depicted the origins of the six original “Bionicle” heroes. Talk about taking advantage of kids that didn’t know better! The fact that they do so little to control such marketing strategies astounds me.
what inspired me to write this post: http://responsiblemarketing.com/blog/2013/07/22/marketing-to-kids