YouTube Kids
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
By Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst Toys & Video Games
As I sat down at my desk one morning last week and scanned industry news along with items posted on Facebook and Twitter, I ran across something really interesting that one of my Twitter followers posted. “Barbie Premieres Her First Music and Dance Video” read the headline and of course there was a handy link to the video. The video itself is a lot of fun, but its bigger purpose is to promote a new line of fashion dolls being introduced for this holiday season by Mattel. The following morning I came across a posting on KidScreen that highlighted how Disney is also using YouTube as part of its launch campaign for the new line of Toy Story toys tied to the re-release of the first two movies in 3-D.
While it’s certainly not new for companies to harness the power of the Internet, and specifically YouTube and now social networking sites as part of their overall marketing plans for their products, it might surprise some that they would be part of a marketing program for a product aimed at younger kids. But in truth kids are big users of a lot of these Web sites, and as detailed in our recent report Kids & Cross-Entertainment Behaviors, YouTube.com ranked in the top 5 Web sites used by kids ages 2-12. This same report shows that among purchases made for kids during the past holiday season, 58 percent of dollars spent were spent on entertainment-related product categories. So you can imagine that for companies involved in entertainment, understanding kids and how they’re consuming various types of entertainment is pretty important. But given the power of entertainment in kids lives, any company involved with products for kids in any category needs to understand where kids are spending their time and how they’re participating with and consuming entertainment and media in order to best promote their products and services. After seeing this new Barbie music and dance video it’s clear that Mattel understands just that.
But why promote to kids? Don’t parents make all the purchase decision anyway? Well yes, and no. While some product categories are heavily driven by parental decisions, most entertainment categories (including toys) are heavily driven by the child’s request or influence. Our new Toy Purchase Decisions report takes a deep dive into the mechanics which influence a toy purchase, and dolls is one of the categories in which purchases are most influenced by child request. So using the right media vehicles that kids in your particular target market are using is critically important to catalyzing that kids’ request. While seeing the announcement of the Barbie video got me thinking about this whole subject, in fairness to both genders, let me address boys for a moment. Boys are also big users of YouTube, and in fact our report shows that the Web site is used by boys more than girls. And while gaming content is very popular and consumed by both genders, it’s relatively more important to boys than girls. Our Kids & Cross-Entertainment Behaviors report goes into a lot of detail about how games are acquired and consumed by kids, and the importance it plays in the usage of a multitude of devices from computers to video game systems to phones. As we head into the all-critical holiday time period for many industries, toys and video games included, thinking about these issues and most effectively reaching kids and stimulating that “kid request” could very well be the difference between success and failure for many products.
Toys | Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst Toys & Video Games | 
September 1, 2009 1:47 pm
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