Marketing products to children

Marketing products to children

The most practical and common used way to attract children through the packaging is by using competitions, giveaways and collector promotions. Many companies use images of well-known athletes and celebrities, charities, theme parks and sports teams. It has been found that 78% between 2006 and 2007 that cross-promotions have increased sales when the product is targeted to children and adolescents. 

The main impacts towards food packaging targeted towards children are:

• ·     Promotions,
• ·      Nutritional information,
• ·      Size and shape of the product,
• ·      How the packaging opens and closes,
• ·      How freshness of the product is maintained
• ·      Colours used
• ·      Other shapes, symbols and how the product is depicted
• ·      Display of the brand and brand characters

Small packaging is a simple way to attract children along with fun and creative shapes. The most common use of colours for packaging targeted at children are, blue, red, green and yellow. Younger children attracted more to the promotions; older children are influenced by the visual graphics and the colour of the packaging. Although green gives the impression of freshness so it may give a false aspect of how fresh or nutritious the product actually is.

Some promotions that have worked well for many packaging products are stickers and collector cards, toys, unusual names and flavours and colours of the products inside. Fun packaging revolves around the key theme that “food is fun and eating is entertainment” (Elliott, 2008a). Young children seem to be attracted to the images and shape of the product and packaging not the colour of the packaging. While older children, are attracted to the aesthetics and colour of the packaging.

Hawks, C, Cambridge University Journals, Food Packaging: the medium is the message, http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPHN%2FPHN13_02%2FS1368980009993168a.pdf&code=ba62a285dc9dc811cc1b3917051f9ad5

Elliot, C 2008, University of Calgary, Healthy Food Looks Serious”: How Children Interpret Packaged Food Products, http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/includes/pdf/elliott1.pdf