Addressed in resolutions by the Statute of the Child and Adolescent and by industry bodies such as CONAR, the advertising approach generates debate in the communications environment.
Defining a product or service's target audience and directing marketing efforts directly at them is the primary premise of advertising. This logic, however, is not the same when it comes to children's advertising.
Because children are more vulnerable to marketing messages and, at the same time, don't have the same discernment as adults to make decisions about what they want, marketing communication to this group must comply with an extensive set of rules and regulations.
Throughout the text, it will be possible to understand a little about these national rules and guidelines regarding advertising aimed at children.
Who is the child consumer?
Before analyzing the issue from the perspective of advertising, it's important to define how this child consumer audience is characterized.
The Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) categorizes children as anyone up to the age of twelve. From then on, until the age of 18, the person is considered an adolescent.
Any communication with a marketing appeal aimed at the 0-12 age group is therefore categorized as children's advertising.
From a consumer point of view, children are an interesting audience. After all, even if they don't make a purchase directly, children use clothes, shoes, food, toys, hygiene products and other items.
With the aim of categorizing and better understanding the consumer subgroups present among children and adolescents, Kids Corp., a kidtech company specializing in the children's segment, has produced the guide "How to understand, classify and differentiate: children and adolescents in sub-segments".
The report gives details of how children relate to brands, as well as measuring how much they influence adults' purchasing decisions. The division made by the study classified children and adolescents into a number of categories. Take a look:
1-First stage
From zero to three years old. At this stage, 100% of purchasing decisions are made by parents or other adults, who have total control over children's contact with brands.
2- Preschoolers
This group includes children between 4 and 6 years old, a stage when their first tastes are being developed. At this point, children already have an influence on household decisions: 45% influence subscriptions to streaming services and 50% interfere in the purchase of food or drink.
3- Third stage
The influence of this group, made up of children aged 7 to 9, on consumer decisions is even greater: 53% of them influence food and drink choices and 20% say they already have their own money to buy the things they want. More than half of this group (55%) spend much of their time entertaining themselves with toys.
4- Pre-adolescents
The last stage of the children's category is made up of children aged 11 to 13, who have already shown their rejection of children's brands and have their tastes influenced by friends, youtubers and gamers. Of this group, 82% spend their time consuming YouTube videos, 71% playing video games and 53% watching some kind of streaming content.
How is children's advertising characterized?
Children's advertising is any marketing message that appeals to children to consume some kind of product or service.
This applies to messages in different media, be it television, magazines, social networks, video platforms, cinema, newspapers, out-of-home media or any other medium.
In order to attract the attention of this audience, messages aimed at children generally follow certain characteristics, such as the use of flashy colors and soundtracks and, in many cases, the presence of characters that generate identification with the little ones.
Another strategy, which used to be widely used in advertising in the 1980s and 1990s, was the presence of celebrities and personalities from the children's universe to reinforce the consumer appeal.
The rules and laws of children's advertising
The issue of children's advertising in Brazil has been a topic of controversy and debate in the communications industry for years. In the 1980s and 1990s, commercials for toys, clothes, shoes and other products that appealed directly to children were quite common, especially on free-to-air television.
In some cases, these messages went so far as to say that the child should ask their parents for certain products and even encouraged them to buy an item to show their friends, thus arousing the desire of other children to buy that product.
In Brazil, there are some laws that guide the practice of advertising aimed at children. The Consumer Defense Code of 1990 states that "advertising directed at children takes advantage of the lack of judgment and experience of this public". Targeting this audience, therefore, would be abusive and illegal, according to the text of the Code.
Also dating from 1990, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) makes the family, the community, society and the state responsible for the well-being and healthy development of children and young people.
What does the advertising self-regulation code say?
The National Advertising Self-Regulation Council (Conar) deals with the issue in its Article 37, which states: "The efforts of parents, educators, authorities and the community must find in advertising a supporting factor in the formation of responsible citizens and conscious consumers. With this in mind, no advertisement shall address an imperative appeal for consumption directly to children".
Conar bans advertisements that:
- detract from positive social values (friendship, urbanity, honesty, justice, generosity and respect for people, animals and the environment);
- deliberately provoke any kind of discrimination;
- associate children and adolescents with situations incompatible with their condition;
- impose the notion that consumption of the product provides superiority or, failing that, inferiority;
- provoke situations of embarrassment for parents or guardians, with the aim of pushing consumption;
- use children and adolescents as models to make a direct appeal, recommendation or suggestion for use or consumption, although their participation in the relevant demonstrations of the service or product is allowed;
- use a journalistic format, in order to avoid the advertisement being mistaken for news;
- advertise that a product intended for consumption by children and adolescents contains peculiar characteristics which, in fact, are found in all similar products;
- use situations of psychological pressure or violence that are capable of instilling fear.
The self-regulation code also condemns merchandising or indirect contracted advertising that uses children, elements of the children's universe or other artifices with the deliberate aim of capturing the attention of this specific audience, whatever the vehicle used. It also states that in segmented content created, produced or programmed specifically for children, whatever the vehicle used, advertising for products and services aimed exclusively at this audience will be restricted to commercial breaks and spaces.
Finally, it establishes that children and adolescents should not appear as advertising models in advertisements that promote the consumption of any goods and services incompatible with their condition, such as firearms, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, fireworks and lotteries, and all others equally affected by legal restriction.
What are the abusive practices in children's advertising?
The issue of children's advertising prompted the publication of Resolution 163 of the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (Conanda), which characterized some practices as abusive.
According to the resolution, "the practice of directing advertising and marketing communication to children, with the intention of persuading them to consume any product or service, is considered abusive, given the national policy for the care of children and adolescents," using the following aspects. See:
1- Childish language, special effects and excessive colors;
2- Soundtracks of children's songs or sung by children's voices;
3- Representation of children;
4- People or celebrities who appeal to children;
5- Children's characters or presenters;
6- Cartoons or animation;
7- Puppets or similar;
8- Promotion with distribution of prizes or collectible gifts or with appeals to children;
9- Promotion with competitions or games that appeal to children.
The controversy surrounding children's advertising
In the view of some advertisers and companies, so many restrictions are damaging the economy and business of various companies in the advertising chain, as well as media outlets.
On the side of those who support this idea, there is the argument that the restrictions on children's advertising have been responsible for the reduction in content aimed at children on free-to-air television.
About two decades ago, practically all the big commercial TV stations had a children's program, essentially made up of cartoons or talk shows. In recent years, however, this type of children's content has become rare.
Among critics of the restrictions on children's advertising, the reason for this is that most of the advertisers of children's programs were companies selling products aimed at children. Without being able to advertise directly to their target audience, therefore, there would be no reason to invest in advertising in the breaks of these shows, which would end up making them unsustainable for broadcasters.
This idea, however, is refuted by organizations that defend conscious consumption, especially the Alana Institute, one of the most prominent voices on child protection.
Since 2005, the Institute has been focusing on the issue of children's advertising and subsequently created the Criança e Consumo (Child and Consumption) Program, a platform that aims to guide society on the importance of preserving children from marketing appeals in order to form a less consumerist society that is more aware of its choices.
According to the Alana Institute, the reason why free-to-air broadcasters have practically eliminated children's programming from their schedules is due to the change in consumer behavior and the change in market dynamics, which has concentrated children's programs on specialized pay channels, leaving the free-to-air TV slot for attractions aimed at audiences of all ages.
Good practices in children's advertising
If the issue of children's advertising had already generated disagreements a few years ago, with the spread of digital media, the discussion has become more complex, since children are more exposed to content in different windows.
For this reason, major players in the technology sector have been trying to turn their attention to the issue of advertising content aimed at children.
In October 2021, Google, together with the National Advertising Self-Regulation Council (Conar), launched a manual of general guidelines for content creators, advertisers and agencies on children's advertising.
The content was drawn up with the participation of the São Paulo State Public Prosecutor's Office and aims to align the industry with the same guidelines. In the guide, Google points out that one of the factors to be taken into consideration when designing advertising aimed at children is the importance of observing the condition of children and adolescents as developing people, with special care taken in relation to safety, preservation of identity and protection of personal data.
The guide identifies that all advertising material aimed at children must be identified in a clear and accessible way and be consistent with the age group of the target audience, which makes it impossible, for example, to advertise alcoholic beverages or firearms.
Licensed products and other types of approaches to children
Another area that carries a lot of weight in terms of children's consumption is licensed products. A 2017 survey by the Brazilian Licensing Association (Abral) showed that 80% of all licensed products in the country are aimed at children.
Licensing has become an important source of revenue for a number of companies and brands, which take advantage of the success of characters from animations, films and series to launch products in a variety of segments, from toys to clothes and household items.
Among the companies with a strong presence in the licensed segment are giants such as Disney, Barbie, Marvel, DC Comics and others.
What you need to consider about children's advertising
The issue of children's advertising, therefore, is far from being resolved and a consensus among the parties involved in the communications industry.
What is important to note is that society, as well as the major advertising brands, has been willing to enrich the debate with information and ideas that can direct the way for companies to find ways of impacting their target audience without breaking the rules or directing unbridled consumer appeals to a group without discernment about what would be appropriate or not in terms of consumption and choices.
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