Buy Buy Baby! Why Your Marketing Should Be Targeted at Babies

 

By age of 3 months, 40% of infants are watching screen media regularly and by the time they are 2, the number rises to 90%. By the age of 6 months, babies are able to form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. By the time American kids are 36 months old, they can recognize an average of 100 brand logos.

By seeding the products and images early, marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition, they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed.

According to Juliet Schor, author of born to buy, children who can recognize logos by the age of 18 months not only grow up to prefer those brands but grow up to believe the brands correspond to their own personal qualities, like being cutting edge, strong, fast or sophisticated.

Gillette’s internal “war team” (an internal research firm) found out that once a boy has tried a Gillette shaver twice, there’s a 92% chance he will continue using the brand as an adult.

The younger we are when we start using a brand or product, the more likely we are to keep using it for years to come. But that’s not the only reason. Children can also be a marketing tool in and of themselves, thanks to the “pester power” - As James U McNeal, professor of Marketing at Texas A&M University, puts it “75% of spontaneous food purchases can be traced to a nagging child; and one out of two moms will buy a food product simply because her kid requests it. To trigger desire in a child is to trigger desire in a household.

Often times, our adult preference for a brand we used as a child is about nostalgia _ This is by linking the brand to warm memories.