The Techniques Target Children
No one can deny the fact that advertising is indispensable in promoting products to consumers who are both adults and children. Advertisements that target children have its specific features apart from the adult ones. The ads for children usually have colorful cartoons, loud sounds, and jingles. Three of the popular techniques are cartoon characters, free offers, and role models.
First, the most popular approach; “cartoon characters” in television advertising aimed at children. Advertisers not only use the well-known characters, such as Mickey mouse and Donald duck, but also creating new ones. Izzy Snack is an illustration of this type of scheme. In this advertisement, there is a funny robot voice, singing a song, while a piece of snack is flying in a house, then to downtown where crowds of children are waving their hands to catch the flying snack.
The other popular technique is “free-offers” which are also named as "giveaways" or "premiums". As a successful method used on adult, advertisers hope that it produces the same effects on children. Kido Ice cream from Kinh Do is another example. Children are encouraged to collect the characters of gifts such as a bicycle or a computer. These characters are engraved on ice-scream sticks.
Last but not least, the “role model” is a method that utilizes older children who looks professional in certain activities related to the products, that younger children admire or look up to. Targeted audience evidently wants to imitate the idols whom they viewed as a role model. For instance, in Dutch's Lady Milk advertisement on television, a fifth-grade boy sits in the middle of the crowd and looks on while the older seventh-grade boy wins the first prize of swimming, Tae Kwon Do, and mathematics in competitions.
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