Kids marketing conference

By Niniane Veldhoen on 15 June 2010

On the second of June I went to the kids marketing conference in Amsterdam. An interesting day about how to reach the young target Group of 7 to 14 year olds. After a group of dancers opened the conference room, Paul Sikkema (general manager of Qrius) started the day introducing us to the First speaker: The 14 year old Rutger de Quay. Rutger, winner of the ‘Dutch Bloggie’, is known for his weblog www.koekjesfabriek.com. He writes about the stupidities he comes across in everyday life. Besides his blog he is probably the youngest twitter addict with over a thousand followers, in his own words, probably all housewives and seniors. (And after this day probably some marketeers as well.)

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Only 14 years old, but already a very clear view on social media and especially how not to use it. He described how his life revolves around his smartphone and criticises the way companies use social media, he doesn’t mind to be bothered by brands, but there has to be a very clear ‘what’s in it for me’ message, otherwise he thinks it won’t work.  His down to earth funny way of speaking was a good start of the day.

After Rutger gave us an insight into the world of a 14 year old social media addict, Paul Sikkema presented the latest kids trends. According to Qrius, kids still prefer playing outside (especially with a waveboard) over playing inside (behind computers or television),  but there are more and more children entering the world of social media (habbo, hyves, youtube).  The number of mobile phones under these youngsters is increasing as well, often second hand from their parents. For the near future Paul expects more digitalisation, awareness for target groups will become more important for companies and the Corporate Social Responsibility will increase. 

Marieke van Heeswijk (general manager Disney channels belenux) talked about Generation XD (8-14). A generation brought up in a world of prosperity, internet and mobile. They are ‘easily wise’ because they have an easy access to information. They use new media faster and more often.  They believe children don’t make a difference between the computer, laptop, ipad or iphone. For children these technologies are the same, they just have a different size screen.  Children consume what they want, when they want it and where they want it.  I would love to see the research they did on this topic.

A very enlightening story was the one of Rutger Verhoeven (Blink uitgevers).  They managed to evolve the 90 year old magazine Taptoe into an awesome crossmedial concept, Taptoe mysteries. Knowing that children divide their media time amongst more and more different media nowadays, seeing their sales figures drop, they had to do something to give their magazine a new boost.
What they knew about their target group:  they like to play outside, they like to play inside, they watch tv, they like online games and.. they hardly read print..
So they did more research, in a very enlightening way. They observed. For days they were in schools, observing from the back of the class. They went home with the children, spending days with the children, talking, asking questions and having fun. They were looking for, how they call it, key insights.
The main key insights were: Children want to belong in a group, they don’t want to stand out. Children don’t have an identity yet. It’s girls against the boys, and they want schoolyard material to show off with. And in relationship to the magazine, boys answered: ‘there needs to be a hot chick’.

So meet the hot chick: Tex
She is one of the 6 characters, with each there one game like skills. The magazine and the website together take the viewer through a journey. There are all sort of mysteries that need to be solved and you are dared to solve them. To solve the mysteries you need and the magazine, and the website. Besides that the characters al have their own hyves page, where you can chat with them. With this concept Taptoe won the Mercur award for best crossmedial concept of the year, the number of subscribers increased with 15% and the online reach has increased with 20%. The next steps they want to take are tv, games, social media, merchandise and partnerships. They are already talking with ‘huis anubis’ and there are plans for an event. 

During the day there was a competition going on as well, the perfect beat award was presented for the best kids marketing campaign of 2010. The nominees were:
1. C1000 with the gogo campaign
2. The Animal diploma, from more animal, more human
3. Ola icefun
The nominees presented their campaign in a short pitch and the audience had the final vote. The voting system was simple, take your Smartphone, sms to a certain number, receive an sms in return with a link, click on the link and there you could place your vote. Typical, more than half of the audience (marketers who discuss social media en Smartphone’s all day, coming up with strategies and applications for these ‘new’ media)  didn’t have a Smartphone (neither did I, see my former blog ‘there’s something about cell phones’).  So half of the audience wasn’t able to vote, which was somewhat of a shocker to the organization. Nevertheless the gogo campaign of c1000 won the award with 73% of the votes. 

My end conclusions of this inspiring day :
- Children are not very different nowadays than they were in the past, they just have more media to choose from. They do not multitask better, they are not less social etc.
- Computers are more and more used for communication (msn, hyves, habbo), instead of mainly just for games (spele.nl)
- A successful kids campaign is social and connecting, interactive, has a positive message and an easily accessible call to action.
- One of the most important conditions to consider when working on your kid strategy is trustworthiness. 

An inspiring day and a good jumpstart to my research next year, which will focus on how to tell a story to children using different media.

tagged with: taptoe, generation xd, kids marketing, social media

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