Kids and branding in a digital world

Barry Gunter

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781784992453
• eBook ISBN: 9781784996482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

This book is about how kids become engaged with brands, and how their relationship with them changes over time as they mature as consumers. Children are introduced to brands at an early age, and they have become increasingly brand conscious. As consumer markets have developed and become more crowded and competitive, so brands have become more important in enabling consumers to make informed choices. However, it may not always be in a child's best interests to develop a preoccupation with brands, particularly if they influence the way they think about themselves. This book examines the emergence of brand awareness among children and the importance of their cognitive development to their understanding of brands and consumer socialisation. It also sheds light on problems caused by the emergence of new forms of branding in the digital era, especially in online social media and virtual environments where so many children now spend a great deal of time, and explores the implications for children and for regulators.

1

What is a brand?

What is a brand? The term has been defined in various ways over time. According to the American Marketing Association Dictionary, a brand is the ‘name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product distinct from those of other sellers’ (American Marketing Association Dictionary, 2013). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary adopted a more historical perspective in its collection of definitions of ‘brand’, which traced its etymological roots to the idea of something being burned into something else as an identifying mark or sign of source of origin or ownership. Hence, one definition of brand was ‘a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership’. Linked to this is the concept of ‘trademark’ which is ‘a printed mark made for similar purposes’. There was also the use of brands to mark out criminals, with the ‘brand’ again taking the form of a mark that was burned into the skin by a hot iron. Then, there is a definition provided that is more consistent with the modern day idea of a brand, namely ‘a class of goods identified by name as the product of a single firm or manufacturer’ (Merriam-Webster, no date).

Historically, the term brand has been traced to the Old Norse word brandr, which means ‘to burn’. Producers would literally burn their mark into their merchandise to differentiate it from similar commodities marketed by other producers (Marketing Magazine, 2006). Thousands of years ago, ancient craftsmen in societies in the Far East and Middle East not only marked their products, but also used other markers on signs and, when it became available, early forms of paper such as papyrus, to make announcements about their wares. Thus branding, from early on, became inter-twined with promotional messages or advertisements. It would be over simplifying ‘branding’, however, as a cultural phenomenon to claim that it is defined principally by advertising. These communications can be used to spread brand familiarity, but the meanings of brands reside in the minds of consumers and derive from different experiences they have had or reports of others’ experiences with specific products they have heard.

A well-known brand such as Coca-Cola or McDonald’s comprises more than just a familiar name. That name signals to people other attributes or features that have derived from personal experiences or stories they have heard about these suppliers and their products or services. Advertising represents one source of such story-telling, but does not operate on its own (Holt, 2003).

In the earliest days of commerce, advertising emerged in what today would be seen as crude forms of promotions, but which nonetheless had the same overall objectives as modern day multi-modal, ‘integrated’ marketing campaigns. This was simply to draw to people’s attention the availability of commodities or services and the names of their producers or suppliers. The earliest discovered formats have included tradesmen’s signs or the signs outside taverns that date from ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman eras (Nevitt, 1982).

Perhaps the best known examples of pre-industrialised branding were the marks used by farmers to identify their livestock and differentiate them from those owned by others. Cattle owners, for example, would burn a mark with a branding iron into the animal’s skin. Many of us will be familiar with this form of branding from the old Hollywood westerns. In essence, branding signals where a product was made, who its producer is, and indicates its authenticity. These features became increasingly important with societal developments that saw more widespread transportation of goods to distant markets. In less complex societies, people were dependent on local produce with which they would be very familiar. They would often personally know the source of origin and would thus be in no need of additional information about its authenticity.

As societies developed through technology innovations, branding became closely linked to advertising, which in turn comprised a collection of techniques designed to promote commodities, services, or events. The term brand referred to the item being promoted, or to the manufacturer, supplier, or owner of the creative rights to the property or service being produced. Advertising as an activity has played a key part in defining the meaning of brands by presenting to brand consumers or users information about the product or service being provided; this eventually becomes an integral aspect of what the brand stands for or what makes it distinctive (McDonald & Scott, 2007).

While improvements in transportation meant that people travelled further and experienced commodities in markets they were less familiar with, and often returned with commodities they might then share with others, with word-of-mouth recommendations, the emergence of mass markets often meant that these more direct brand experiences would not be available. Manufacturers therefore needed to find ways of marking out their products from those of rivals and increasingly to incentivise consumers to choose their wares.

Branding and advertising became more widespread as mass product markets emerged following the period of industrial revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Kotler, 1965). Developments in production technologies and in forms of transportation meant that products could be produced in larger quantities and moved more swiftly from location to location. From a world in which people relied on local produce, people found more product choices opened up to them as commodities sourced from many miles away could be transported to them more quickly. Locally produced household products found that they faced competition from similar items sourced long distances away that were often competitive in terms of pricing and, with the early emergence of advertising, were accompanied with promotional messages claiming that these interlopers into the local market were superior to local products (O’Guinn, Allen & Semenik, 2009).

As commodity markets moved from being purely local to mass and geographically dispersed, so a need grew for more information to be provided to consumers about the expanded range of variants within a product class where familiarity with non-local producers was scant. Advertising, therefore, became important for consumers in relation to their decision making, and for producers and suppliers to enhance their credibility and distinctiveness as well as that of their own brands (Norris, 1981).

‘Brands’ that emerged during the industrialised era took the form of trademarks, which were also distinctive marks of ownership of products that became increasingly widely used as the technologies of mass production evolved in industrialised urban centres in the nineteenth century. Manufacturers would imprint company logos or other distinguishing marks onto their products as well as onto the packaging in which the products were transported.

There are competitive claims by different companies to have introduced the world’s first trademark. Bass & Company made this claim in respect to their triangle brand. Lyle’s made a similar claim for their Golden Syrup, which has hardly changed its green and gold packaging since 1885. Other early brands introduced during the nineteenth century that persist and remain prominent to the present day include Campbell’s Soup, Coca-Cola, Pears Soap and Quaker Oats. Kellogg’s also emerged during this period with their initial range of breakfast cereals (O’Guinn, Allen & Semenik, 2009).

Brands and their associated advertising also had to become increasingly mindful of the different needs of their consumers, and in particular the changes that occurred in the nature of key decision makers in respect of household purchases. During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, there were numerous national, international, and global conflicts that resulted in men folk being away fighting wars. These events facilitated role changes in the home, with women adopting a more dominant role in making domestic purchases (O’Guinn, Allen & Semenik, 2009).

In some commodity fields where men and women may once have engaged in do-it-yourself solutions, the long absences of men away from home encouraged women consumers to seek more ready-made products – including food and clothes – rather than growing or making their own (Tellis, 1998). A demand grew for products that effectively made life easier – a trend that has continued to the present day where supermarkets provide one-stop shops for ready-made everything you can think of. This new kind of consumer demand created markets for more variants of specific types of products that in turn increased the importance of establishing product distinctiveness through branding.

Such social developments not only gave rise to the early mass consumer markets but also spawned specialist service industries to advise commodity manufacturers and suppliers on how to capture the attention of consumers in more crowded and competitive markets. By the end of the nineteenth century, the advertising industry had become established and the major agency of the time, J. Walter Thompson, represents another brand that has remained at the forefront of its business field ever since. The agency produced one of the first documents that attempted to explain to non-experts the meaning of trademarks and advertising. This treatise laid down foundations of modern branding activities engaged in by professional marketers. Over the early decades of the twentieth century, advertising emerged as a standard practice for virtually all product manufacturers and service suppliers when they wished to get a new product to market. It also became de rigour in terms of maintaining the market profiles of established brands as product marketplaces became increasingly crowded and competitive (McDonald & Scott, 2007).

Getting the right ‘brand’ became a primary objective for commercial organisations across all major sectors of production and major service industries. Marketing evolved as a discipline, defining and developing key concepts such as brand identity, brand personality, and brand equity and value. Product manufacturers came to realise that their customers were not just purchasing their commodities but more significantly they were buying their brands. Although a product might have functional value for consumers, in a marketplace that might offer a menu of more than ten or even more than twenty variants to choose from, market leaders were those items with the strongest or most appealing brand image. If a product’s brand image took a tumble because of events that called its reputation into question, its volume of sales and market share could also plummet (Klein, 2000).

With these social changes taking place during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, so-called ‘aspirational’ brands began to emerge. Not only were these brands and their associated logos and symbols signifiers of origin and quality, they also conveyed other messages to consumers about social status or fashion sense and taste, which added value to products over and above their functionality, reliability, and performance. Some early brands of this kind, such as accessories brand Louis Vuitton, were so successful they triggered large counterfeiting markets that copied the style of Louis Vuitton originals and labelled them with the ‘LV’ monogram but which were nonetheless fakes. One estimate calculated that around 99% of all alleged Louis Vuitton goods in circulation were not originals (Brand Domain, 2013).

Brand importance

In the modern era of mass production, brands can represent commercial organisations’ most valuable assets. The development, maintenance, and evolution of a brand is closely tied to a range of promotional activities broadly subsumed under marketing and advertising. A brand is not just a mark of differentiation in the sense of a distinctive physical identity, it also increasingly an indicator of quality or excellence.

Brands are therefore defined to a significant extent by their reputation among consumers. They are signifiers to consumers that this particular version of a product will deliver greater satisfaction than others (Keller & Ewards, 1998). In addition, consumers will be willing to pay more for a strong brand than a weak brand even though both belong to the same product category and may be functionally the same (Grassl, 1999).

The popularity of a brand in terms of the positive opinions that consumers hold about it underpin its value and its market share. The brand can cover a single product or extend across a range of product variants and can even evolve to be applied to the company responsible for its production or delivery and distribution. Children can begin to make produce requests using the names of brands while they are still infants (McNeal & Yeh, 1993). Very young children lack any spending power of their own. They can, however, ask others – most usually their parents – to make purchases for them. Once they have started school, and more especially as they enter their ‘tweenage’ (8–12) and teenage years, they acquire more spending capability of their own and an understanding of money and how to use it (Gunter & Furnham, 1998). Their early requests tend to centre on food and toys, later switching to clothes and communications and entertainment gadgets (McNeal, 1992).

As they get into their teens, young consumers spend money on going out with their friends. Their activities will include entertainment and sports, but shopping is also an important leisure pursuit. Brand requests can be triggered by seeing what other children have got and by talking to peer groups (Moschis & Churchill, 1978; Moschis & Moore, 1979, 1980). Peer groups become progressively more important to children as they get older and gradually more influential in relation to brand choices (Saunders, Samli & Tozier, 1973; Coleman & Hendry, 1990; Lee & Brown, 1995). Children’s brand choices can also be influenced by advertising (Gorn & Goldberg, 1978; Prasad, Rao & Sheikh, 1978; Goldberg, Gorn & Gibson, 1987). The influences of advertising can also interact with and be mediated by parental and peer group effects (Galst, 1980; Stoneman & Brody, 1982).

As branding has become the norm in the sphere of product and service marketing its meaning has evolved from what it represented in its earliest forms. The initial brands were physical marks of distinction to signify ownership or the name of a product’s creator and manufacturer. Over time, as commodity fields became swamped with brands, it has come to mean much more than this. The concept of ‘brand’ evolved as the practice of advertising grew and different models of advertising and its effectiveness were tried and tested.

During the first part of the twentieth century, the advertising industry realised it needed to understand more about consumer behaviour and the effectiveness of different media platforms as promotional vehicles, in order to offer better advice to clients about how to spend their advertising budgets. The agencies realised that this kind of value added service not only gave them a direction in which to develop their own services and the revenue streams they could earn, but that if they could produce better measurable impacts of benefit to their clients than rival agencies, this would strengthen their own brand.

It was during this period that agencies made closer study of behaviourist psychology to develop a better understanding of how consumer behaviour could be shaped. Furthermore, agencies hired marketing researchers to develop market research techniques that not only measured post campa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 What is a brand?
• 2 Kids and branding
• 3 Emergence of brand consciousness
• 4 Children and digital branding
• 5 Branding potential of online social media
• 6 Brands and advergames
• 7 Brands and adverworlds
• 8 Regulation and control of branding to children
• Bibliography
• Index