Pester power ahoy!

Have you ever tried counting the number of ads featuring kids? Not that you don’t have better things to do in life! But if you are a parent, who has to regularly field off questions from your children why you cannot buy the latest car or mobile phone, you might do well to undertake this activity asap. The need for the brazen use of khandaani looking kids to sell everything from mosquito repellants to telecom services is indeed questionable. One can understand if the product or brand is meant for the child, say a toy, a health drink, bicycle or apparel. But why show a 5-year old becoming a scarecrow to help his granny shoo the crows away; and bring in a detergent which cleans the stains, while the kid beams his angelic pearlies before the camera? Probably, it is the urge to tell a story. Or the itch to add the cuteness factor, and establish the emotional connect with the brand. Whatever the ruse, the ground zero of all this marketing activity is the middle-class home, which might not be financially strong enough to satiate the kids’ endless demands. Marketers should realise this. Pester power is potent. And marketers do realise this. The sad fact is that despite all the claims of thinking out-of-the-box, marketers and advertisers resort to good ol’ pester power to sell their wares. Offhand, I can rattle off a slew of products which use children – telecom, detergents, mosquito repellant, soaps, washing machines, television, insurance, banking services, hawaai chappals, air conditioners, everything except condoms. Or is it? Hark back to the 1980s when a Kohinoor ad featured a desperate couple trying to steal in a few private moments when their bonny baby starts bawling. No one has been creative enough to feature kids in condom ads after that. Developed countries have strict rules for featuring young ones in ads. Like India’s free market economy, its advertising industry, too, uses kids wantonly to sell products. It’s time our marketers, creative gurus and ad film directors really put their thinking caps on, and shun the easy way out. Using kids to sell products is not cute, it’s irritating.