Free Fast Food Nation: What The All-American Meal is Doing to the World by Eric Schlosser

directed at children today has an immediate goal. “It’s not just getting kids to whine,” one marketer explained in
Selling to Kids
, “it’s giving them a specific reason to ask for the product.” Years ago sociologist Vance Packard described children as “surrogate salesmen” who had to persuade other people, usually their parents, to buy what they wanted. Marketers now use different terms to explain the intended response to their ads — such as “leverage,” “the nudge factor,” “pester power.” The aim of most children’s advertising is straightforward: get kids to nag their parents and nag them well.
    James U. McNeal, a professor of marketing at Texas A&M University,is considered America’s leading authority on marketing to children. In his book
Kids As Customers
(1992), McNeal provides marketers with a thorough analysis of “children’s requesting styles and appeals.” He classifies juvenile nagging tactics into seven major categories. A
pleading
nag is one accompanied by repetitions of words like “please” or “mom, mom, mom.” A
persistent
nag involves constant requests for the coveted product and may include the phrase “I’m gonna ask just one more time.”
Forceful
nags are extremely pushy and may include subtle threats, like “Well, then, I’ll go and ask Dad.”
Demonstrative
nags are the most high-risk, often characterized by full-blown tantrums in public places, breath-holding, tears, a refusal to leave the store.
Sugar-coated
nags promise affection in return for a purchase and may rely on seemingly heartfelt declarations like “You’re the best dad in the world.”
Threatening
nags are youthful forms of blackmail, vows of eternal hatred and of running away if something isn’t bought.
Pity
nags claim the child will be heartbroken, teased, or socially stunted if the parent refuses to buy a certain item. “All of these appeals and styles may be used in combination,” McNeal’s research has discovered, “but kids tend to stick to one or two of each that prove most effective… for their own parents.”
    McNeal never advocates turning children into screaming, breath-holding monsters. He has been studying “Kid Kustomers” for more than thirty years and believes in a more traditional marketing approach. “The key is getting children to see a firm… in much the same way as [they see] mom or dad, grandma or grandpa,” McNeal argues. “Likewise, if a company can ally itself with universal values such as patriotism, national defense, and good health, it is likely to nurture belief in it among children.”
    Before trying to affect children’s behavior, advertisers have to learn about their tastes. Today’s market researchers not only conduct surveys of children in shopping malls, they also organize focus groups for kids as young as two or three. They analyze children’s artwork, hire children to run focus groups, stage slumber parties and then question children into the night. They send cultural anthropologists into homes, stores, fast food restaurants, and other places where kids like to gather, quietly and surreptitiously observing the behavior of prospective customers. They study the academic literature on child development, seeking insights from the work of theorists such as Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget. They study the fantasy lives of young children, then apply the findings in advertisements and product designs.
    Dan S. Acuff — the president of Youth Market System Consulting and the author of
What Kids Buy and Why
(1997) — stresses the importance of dream research. Studies suggest that until the age of six, roughly 80 percent of children’s dreams are about animals. Rounded, soft creatures like Barney, Disney’s animated characters, and the Teletubbies therefore have an obvious appeal to young children. The Character Lab, a division of Youth Market System Consulting, uses a proprietary technique called Character Appeal Quadrant Analysis to help companies develop