Kids marketing conference

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’.

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