Dos and Don’ts of Digital Marketing Targeted for Child Audiences? Where are the limits? What are the ethical responsibilities? Derived from technological advancement and the protection of personal data, digital marketing is one of the most changing industries. With regard to children and adolescents, it becomes more complex.
Talk to Demian Falestchi, CEO of Kids Corp, to understand what internet marketing is like for this segment of the population. Kids Corp is a company that was born in Argentina and that has developed technology, data and expertise tools for digital marketing focused on adolescent children. They created the kidtech industry.
—What are the main guidelines for digital marketing in children?
– There are rules that make it different when communicating when you address a minor and not an adult. Mainly the challenges of these regulations are based on three factors.
The main one is the regulation on data privacy, the existing one and those that are appearing in different countries. The United States has the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). In Europe they have the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD). Brazil was the first country of Latin America in establishing data protection, through the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), which also includes minors. The next country is Chile, which is about to have a new law. This is something that is happening more and more; Mexico and the other countries are going to arrive.
The gold standard, the first strong regulation was that of the United States (COPPA). It was the first law that was reformulated in 2013 to protect minors. The other regulations are based on this and on certain principles that consist of not spying on and not collecting data from a minor if we do not have the consent of a parent. That is why at the moment of making a login (registration) in an app or a game, it is necessary to consider the father as part of the registration, the child must write the father’s e-mail and he has to authorize.
Children do not have the same criteria as an adult and can be fooled online. Take special care when connecting with them. That is why most social networks are made for people over 13 years old.
Although in Mexico there is no regulation as such, multinational companies have to comply with global regulations. And the main factor that differentiates these laws from the adult world is that data cannot be collected from a minor without the consent of the father or mother. And when we look at the tools he uses Google or the adult world when segmenting a campaign or understanding certain behaviors, is mainly based on data collection.
So there is a first factor and a first challenge for any brand that has to reach an audience of minors: they have to comply with the regulations. The alternative is to have focus groups, where parents have given their consent for their children to participate.
In some countries of the region (Latin America) there are regulations regarding marketing to children. Currently there are none in Mexico; the law that determines hours for advertising focuses only on radio and television, not the digital world. In contrast, Brazil is the most complex country in terms of regulation of advertising for children and adolescents; it is a market with many restrictions.
And the third factor is the labeling laws that define what kind of drinks and food can be communicated, as they try to combat the serious problem of overweight in countries. Mexico is within the top 5 and this is an extremely important issue. So there are certain products that cannot be communicated.
The consequence of not being able to advertise products with excess fat and sugar is that companies are beginning to change their formulas, which is a great positive impact. Brands say “If I don’t communicate, I don’t sell, then I change my product to make it healthier.” There are companies like Kellogg’s that is changing historical formulas, like Choco Krispis.
In that sense, that is the main framework that we find ourselves from a regulatory point of view. However, there are other enormous challenges that must be taken into account. It is not like before, that we only consumed television; children are everywhere and at all times, even simultaneously.
—What are the challenges in communicating with a child audience?
—We are talking about a generation of digital natives, a generation that begins to interact with devices connected to the internet at a very early age, from a few months of age. This generates in them a development of certain skills and a digital life is a much earlier stage, compared to a generation of digital non-natives.
It’s not that today’s generations are smarter. What happens is that boys have training from an early age, they develop fine motor skills, for example to point to the YouTube “skip” or the different games they play by putting their fingers on a smartphone screen. Children connect with the world because they have access to the largest library in the universe, which is the internet.
The question a brand asks is “Where do I find them if they are consuming content on all kinds of devices?” Hence the importance of understanding audiences, what they are doing, where. From there, develop strategies that allow you to connect with them. And once I find them, how do I go about being relevant?
The great challenge of digital marketing is that 99.5% of the solutions are made for adults and do not serve to reach minors. Faced with the most creative beings, which are children and adolescents, how do we go about being creative? Also, understanding that there are a lot of competitors fighting that screen time.
As a result of the pandemic, brands understood that they must be much more honest, attached to real values and not that opportunistic company that wants to sell you something and that’s it.
We try to work together with our clients to develop a reason why, what we are looking for when investing in this segment, how to build medium and long-term strategies, how to build a funnel, how to build KPIs that help move forward. Hypotheses are built based on data.
It is necessary to understand the audience, to understand that it is very dynamic, that it is highly exposed to content, that it consumes more and more content in less time, many times simultaneously. That puts a gigantic challenge on you to be able to be relevant and memorable.
The child may be the one who is consuming a product, but possibly the one who buys it is his circle of influence: moms, dads, uncles, grandparents. However, before you believed that parents were spoken to. Now advertising is directed 90% to children and 10% to parents. The funnel (conversion funnel) almost everything is aimed at the child. People have more and more money at a younger age. The kids are influencers and decision makers. That is why the kid persona (instead of buyer persona) is designed.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx