Question

Is encouraging children to nag their parents an appropriate way of reaching an adult target market? How is it different to the Tremor Program?

Answer 1

Answer:

Sure they’re fun and kids love them, but could cartoon characters used in marketing contribute to the obesity epidemic as well as create nagging children? Today, some parents find themselves having a battle in the cereal aisle. Recognizable characters and logos prompt children to make repeated requests for a range of products including low nutritional foods and beverages. To better understand the media’s impact on children’s health, a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined the “Nag Factor.” The “Nag Factor” is the tendency of children, who are bombarded with marketers’ messages, to unrelentingly request advertised items. Researchers explored whether and how mothers of young children have experienced this phenomenon and strategies for coping. The results are featured in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Children and Media.

Answer 2

No, encouraging children to nag their parents is not an appropriate way of reaching an adult target market.

• The "Nag Factor" refers to children's continuous requests for marketed things when they are overwhelmed with marketing messages.
• Children's developmental flaws are exploited by marketing.
• Children do not comprehend advertising's persuasive aim until they are about the age of eight. Even older children can fail to perceive product placement as advertising because they cannot tell the difference between advertisements and program content.
• Marketers frequently use older children's desire to blend in with their friends and their proclivity to rebel against authority figures to promote their products.
• P&G has launched Tremor, a worldwide project that claims to have cracked the cipher on word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing and helped P&G break through the clutter and drastically increase sales.
• Word-of-mouth marketing, or WoM, is a strategy of recruiting volunteers to try products and then sending them out to tell others about their experiences.