Selling: The Children’s Market

Children are the true impulse buyers, as parents know. Indulgent aunts, uncles and grandparents know it too—and quite a few businessmen are in on the secret. The small army of researchers who analyze, appeal to, and reckon with children say that the 40 million Americans aged two to twelve strongly influence the spending of one consumer dollar in seven, and affect family purchases of everything from cars to soap. “Once children become impressed,” sighs a Chicago advertising executive, “they are very successful naggers.” Buy Me a Mushroom. To impress its Esso trademark on the youngsters, Humble Oil mails out thousands of bird houses, coloring books and popsicle molds among its “gifts of the month.” Norge stimulated appliance sales by offering a free children’s tent with every purchase. Supermarkets have found that young children, who accompany mothers on 33% of shopping trips, are very responsive to point-of-sale promotions for mushrooms, artichoke hearts and other glamorously expensive foods.

It is to children that automakers often direct their advertising campaigns: one Ford station-wagon commercial piles a parcel of kids into a wagon to impress on youthful viewers that in a Ford the whole gang can go with togetherness.

The children’s market spreads far beyond candy or toys (already a $30-per-child year-round business). Furniture stores and some vacation resorts ask TV stations for advertising time sandwiched between children’s programs; household cleaners, such as Texize Chemical Inc.’s Texize, advertise in what is called “children’s prime time.” One of the greatest marketing successes in the annals of Colgate-Palmolive Co.

is its “Soaky”—several pennies worth of bubble bath in a cartoon-character plastic toy container, retailing altogether for 690. “Kids wield a lot of influence in the choice of a toothpaste,” adds an executive of Lever Bros., whose Stripe appeals to the whole household through the children’s interest in color and flavor.

Cheers for Chocks. In this age of proliferating specialists, there are now artful people who make it their business to advise companies on the potentials and pitfalls of marketing to children.

One Manhattan advertising agency—Helitzer, Waring & Wayne, a specialist in the field—reports an increase in billings from $400,000 to $2,000,000 since it opened five months ago.

Marketeers have to surmount one curious problem: many children old enough to choose among brands are too young to read or have limited vocabularies. But 95% of all seven-year-olds are avid televiewers, and TV has made the market what it is. Advertising its Chocks Vitamins with the help of Kukla and Ollie, Miles Laboratories was gratified by researchers’ findings that 64% of the young regular viewers asked Mom to buy Chocks and 38% of the mothers complied. Children respond enthusiastically to products that are connected to animated symbols, such as the Bosco Bear or the Campbell kids. But children dislike being talked down to. In advertising its Keds shoes, U.S. Rubber employs “Kedso the Clown” for the two-to-six-year audience and space-minded “Captain Keds” for the seven-to-twelve group.

Fickle Flickers. Children’s tastes change so rapidly that companies catering to the market survey it constantly to detect each flicker of interest. Popeye is currently out; so are Doctors Kildare and Ben Casey, model trains (they are considered old-fashioned), and tuna fish. Among the current ins: Mr. Magoo, electric toothbrushes, army toys, English bikes, kosher foods, pizza pies, and Frankenstein monsters.