Kids in Advertising
Toni and I don’t get to watch a huge amount of television so perhaps we’re getting a rather skewed view of television advertising lately but we can’t help noticing that there seems to be quite a few advertisers who are using kids in their ads lately.
Here are just some of the ones we have seen over the last few weeks:
MacDonalds use a bunch of kids in pedal-cars going through one of their drive-thrus to encourage people (especially women) to unlock the child within and have breakfast at MacDonalds
Telstra - a major phone provider here in Australia - uses a bunch of kids in a kindergarten class to promote all the things that people can do with one of their mobile phones
Bigpond - the biggest ISP in Australia - uses a child to promote their broadband services. He wants to know why they built the Great Wall of China and his clueless father thinks that it was to keep out the rabbits. The message is that if you don’t want to appear a dummy to your kids sign up for a broadband account and suddenly become full of knowledge.
Medibank Private - a health insurance fund - uses a bunch of kids constructing an incredibly wobbly launching ramp to encourage parents to sign up for health insurance.
G J Gardner - a home builder here in Queensland - uses kids running through a new home singing the company jingle to encourage people to buy their homes.
And there are others too. I just wonder if there is a lesson in there somewhere for small business.
Personally I didn’t find any of those ads made me want to rush out and buy the product. The home builder’s ad positively turned me off. The MacDonalds’ ad and the Telstra ad made me thinki of what it was like when my kids were that age.
And the other two … well I’m glad I kept my shed locked when my kids were small and if I didn’t know the answer to a question I admitted it and the kids and I would look for the answer together
I can’t help but be reminded of the words of a famous actor who once said that you should never appear with small children or animals because they tended to steal the show.
