The growing importance of a child as a decision maker has forced the marketers to tap kids  aggressively while scheduling the promotional advertisements. Children today have become the marketer’s darlings. BY AUSTIN LOBO.

ON THE SHINING shop floor of Ruf Kids, a store for children in Mumbai’s western suburb of Bandra, the Joshi family is looking for something for four-year-old Kavita. Mrs Joshi suggests a red outfit, complete with short, frilled sleeves and an embroidered collar. But little Kavita will have none of it. So Mrs Joshi points out another one, a blue and off-shoulder alter­native. And another and another... But the child weighs them all and waves them all away. She has a mind of her own and will not give in to what others want her to wear. She wants a spaghetti­ strapped outfit just like what film actress Preity Zinta wore in a recent film - or nothing at all. Fourteen-year-old Nazir Syed is no different. He spent a whole day going from one suburb to another looking for a mock-leather jacket he had in mind - something that film actor Shah Rukh Khan was seen wearing.

These children are part of a new generation that is taking the Indian market by storm. They are clear about what they want and will settle for nothing less and they have enormous say in what their families buy as well. “Children influence the buying decisions of about 30 per cent of the Indian fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) market or consumer spending worth Rs 30,000 crore,” says Purnendu Bose, Chief Operating Officer of Hungama TV, a newly launched television channel for children, from the UTV stable, which went on air in September 2004.

Interesting1y, children influence buying not only of products that they will personally use, such as sweets, ice cream or biscuits, but also those their families will use, such as paints, household appli­ances and cars. A study by children’s channel Cartoon Network and market research firm, NFO, over 14 A- and B-class cities with 6,436 respon­dents, which included children aged between seven and 14 years and mothers, shows that children exert more influence in the choice of toys or sports shoes bought than in other products such as computers, cars and mobile phones. But interestingly, children’s opinions are sought as much when a family buys a television set, music system or a computer as when it buys toys and sports shoes.

The study shows that children are not mere spectators in big buying decisions. About 32 per cent of children accompanied their parents when they went to buy a car. Most children showed a preference for Titan watches, Sony music systems, LG television sets and Santro cars, according to the study. Most children also opted for Coca-Cola as their favourite fizzy drink and for Britannia biscuits. They chose Cadbury’s chocolates over the competition and picked Lay’s chips as their favourite.

Youth rulz

Children have come to acquire such an important position in the buying dynamics of a family for various reasons. For one thing, parents today are so involved in their own competitive work environments that often they have little chance to spend quality time with their children. Consequently they tend to indulge their children by giving them what they ask for. Besides, there is no lack of money. “Often parents in dual-income nuclear families tend to give in to their children’s demands because they do not mind spending those few extra thousand rupees if it will make their child happy,” explains a media director of a Mumbai-based advertising agency.

Great exposure

Cable and satellite television and the Internet have made the youth incredibly technology savvy. Not only do children know about the latest gizmos on the international market, but they also know about the features that each model has and their advan­tages as well as the various promotions on offer. Jagdeep Kapoor, managing director of Samsika Marketing Consultancy and author of several books on marketing, says, “Children have a kid’s body but an adult’s mind.” He believes children have become increasingly interested in the environment they live in - they want to know about the number of calories in a soft drink, for instance, and because they are so exposed to the media, especially television and the Internet, they are knowledgeable about the latest deals available and holiday destinations.

Parents often look to their children to make a choice if they want to buy a computer or a mobile telephone or some such gadget. “It gives the parents a sense of pride,” says Bose. “A parent will proudly tell about how his son or daughter made the decision to buy a high-technology product and he or she feels proud that the child is more intelligent than he or she.”

Advertisers love kids

Marketers have understood this well and they are exploiting the opportunity - it’s a big opportunity, all right. A consumer outlook report from retail consultancy KSA Technopak, released in 2004, estimates there are about 32 million children in India aged between eight and 19 in socio-economic classes A, B and C. And marketers cannot afford to ignore such a large market. India is home to 18.7 percent of the world’s children with its 315 million children - a third of its population is less than 15 years old. But marketers see their pot of gold in 47 million children who are less than 15 years old and part of 44 million homes with cable and satellite television - a figure that’s growing by between 15 and 20 per cent a year. “In the past 15 years India has changed,” explains Abhijit Sanyal, chief executive of Boots Piramal Pvt Ltd. “The television boom has given us 176 television channels and an overload of informa­tion to which children are exposed to at an impressionable age. Children are avid consumers of television. They see something new and they want it.”

Vikas Sharma, general manager for sales and marketing at DS Corporation, which owns the Ruf Kids chain, agrees. His company put on its shelves a jacket of the kind that was worn in a Hindi feature film Dhoom and Sharma says, “No child would leave the store without one.” Parents, for their part, are quite content to go along with their children. Sharma points out that a mother came to his store and bought 38 camouflage jackets as return gifts for her son’s camp party to celebrate his birthday.

Ruf Kids, for its part, has just the facilities that will get children going. A four-year-old girl, for instance will not have her hair styled along with her brother at a barber’s shop. She insists on having it done at a parlour just as her mother does. So, Ruf Kids has an area where children can have their hair styled. Besides, it has a mini auditorium where video films are often screened. “About 1,500 children visited the parlour over three months,” says Sharma.

The media too has sensed the trend. Already five children’s channels have hit the air - Cartoon Network, Hungama TV, Pogo, Animax and Nickelodeon - and three more will start soon. Cartoon Network, which has been on the air longest in India, is laughing all the way to the bank. Its advertising revenues increased by 30 per cent last year. Media sources expect this will grow as more channels enter the industry.

A plan for kids

Dual television homes would make media planners’ jobs easier. But for now they must grapple with the fact that most Indian homes have only one television set, which is watched by the mother, father and children, all of who have varied preferences. Jasmin Sohrabji, president of media house MediaCom, would use a children’s channel only if the advertising com­munication were addressing a child. “The media department will go in for a children’s channel only if research from the creative department shows that the child influences the buying decision,” she says. She points out that even though her advertising is aimed at women when it appears on the popular soap opera, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, children in the two-to-five year age-group have their own opinions on the dress sense of many of the char­acters in the drama. “If my advertising were to address children as the main audience I would tweak the media plan to direct it at them,” she says.

MediaCom has a research tool, Synchronous Viewing Data (SVD), which indicates how many children are inclined towards a particular programme. Another tool, Tele-Appeal, indicates how long a person actually watches a television show: This tool suggests the level of interest a child has in a show: “Children watch a lot of shows with their parents but that’s no reason to assume that the show really appeals to them,” explains Sohrabji. “When buying media to target the mother I normally look at the score for kids. But the Tele-Appeal score tells me how interested children actually are in what they are watching.”

Planners also place advertising on a children’s channel to catch the attention of adults who are watching along with their children. Media planners would target a channel such as Pogo, for instance, which has an audience aged between two and four years. Mothers would monitor them a lot more than their older siblings and would tend to watch the channel themselves. On the other hand, audiences of a channel like Cartoon Network, whose viewers are predominantly children aged between five and 10 years, would not want to watch their favourite programmes in the company of their parents.

But at the end of the day budgets matter most. A client who is unwilling to experiment with media is unlikely to gain much from new ways to reach a prospective customer. Media planners would rather stick with the tried and tested method when the budgets are limited instead of experimenting, even though targeting children as the persis­tent persuaders seems attractive. Nevertheless, Sohrabji points out that children’s channels present a definite opportunity especially in the afternoon, when the woman of the house is more relaxed and receptive than in the evening, when, in all probability she is multi-tasking. Consequently she is likely to be more receptive to advertising messages in the afternoon. “This is a window of opportunity in addition to prime time,” she says.

An ethical question

Although advertisers look at children as a route to their parents, many in the advertising fraternity itself are not entirely comfortable with encouraging children to keep up with their peers. Some feel that exposing a child’s vulnerable mind to influences of advertising that encourage children to make demands on parents for things that they might not be able to afford is bound to lead to psychological problems for the child. “Directing advertising messages that highlight differences makes a child aware of differences of status,” explains Lina Ashar, an educationist who runs schools such as Kangaroo Kids and Billabong High. “We teach children to think about what they are being told over the media.”

Her school conducts blind tests, for instance, on cola beverages, to demonstrate how difficult, if not impossible it is to tell one from the other by taste. “It demonstrates how we allow ourselves to be pushed around,” she says. She points out that excessive television watching has resulted in a lot of attention deficient students these days.

At the end of the day; the march of consumerism is bound to accelerate. And it will bring with it more demand for products and services and children will be part of that system. That a genera­tion today is more exposed to the media than ever before will help to drive the process and a tech­nology and advertising savvy generation of children is bound to evolve into a more discerning crop of adults.

Already advertising revenues from children’s channels total Rs100 crore and that figure is expected to increase to Rs 500 crore in the next three or four years. That is one indication of the shape of things to come. “It’s a big growth opportunity,” says Bose of Hungama TV “It will help to develop the market.” That seems like the most likely trend. “The child is father of the man,” says Kapoor of Samsika, quoting the nineteenth century English poet, William Wordsworth. Kapoor continues, “Because of exposure, travel and education, the child who was once a mere spectator, has turned into an influencer and in some cases, even decision maker.” And their parents love it, making it one happy family. In essence, there is no denying the fact that children are India’s emerging power centre, which no smart marketers can afford to ignore.

 Courtesy: USP Age

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