Targeting the consumer kid
Young concern
By Peeyush Agnihotri

THOSE in the business of FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods) know it to the bone. Market has more kicks than half-pence — a veritable minefield for the new entrants and those trying to realign already established brands.

Most of the companies believe in starting from the grassroots. ‘Catch ‘em young’ is the catch phrase. If in school uniform, better still. Management geniuses churn out virulent strategies to sell their goodies and hawk-eyed companies are aware that brand loyalty steadily graduates from eraser to razor and evolves from half-pants to full-trousers.

Thus, we have FMCG entrepreneurs making rounds of teaching shops, oops schools, to distribute their wares as a product promotion strategy. Noodles, wafers, pizzas, soft drinks, toothpaste — the list sounds like a grocery-shopping note. Public schools are their prime target for they know that here dwell those pampered kids whose parents, more often than not, have an ego bigger than their oversized pocket.

Those who are unable to get the principal’s permission to make rounds of the classrooms for their "product promotion", devise another way to crawl into the as-impressionable-as-clay minds of the future generation. They hold seminars, debates, declamation or a painting contests. The winner is gifted with the coupons of the sponsoring company.

Children associate the product with themselves and their peers and the next time when they accompany their parents for shopping they make sure that the product, which they have grown familiar with, accompanies them home. Slowly, the product becomes an inseparable part of the household and the management genius either gets a raise or hops on to a better job, but not before he hooks the kid to a particular product.

"I am fed up with such ploys. Each time when my daughter returns with a packet of wafers from school, she insists on buying more of the same, "says Mridu, a computer professional, whose daughter studies in one of the reputed schools at Chandigarh. "The worst part is that a child buys a product not because she likes it but simply because some freebie is given along with it," she adds.

Marketing personnel, on whose mind sales target weighs more heavily than the necessities of home, have all the more reason to grin. They know that they are making a dent. Promotions in schools are trouble free, requires less effort, the demand is replenishable and above all, the audience is young — so young that even the first stub of beard shows no sign of sprouting on the faces of many. "Yes, people have responded well to our promotion policies. Though I cannot give you exact figures and details, all I can say is that the sales have increased," says Sanjay Kayeless, a sales officer of a reputed company that has recently launched toothpaste. "We deliberately chose school as our target market as we knew that when the next time a child accompanies her parents to a shop, she would buy our brand of product", he adds.

Often what is offered by such companies lead up the garden path. Products are priced higher. Bharat Bhushan Goyal, a university teacher, says that such a practice of visiting schools to entice and sell is unethical. "Firms know that children are imitators by instinct and that is why they apply such smart tactics. The utility is usually not commensurate with the price and high margins are kept in the product," he adds, and opines that schools too should play a prominent role in discouraging such a norm.

Product promotion through contests and competitions is not new either. Recently, a multinational company organised a painting competition. "Such marketing strategies need to be flayed," says Shashi Banerjee, principal of Bhavan Vidyalaya, Panchkula. "We get lots of requests from various multinational companies for free demonstration and distribution of products or event organisation but most of these are negated due to paucity of time and tight school schedule. It is only when we feel that a particular product could be of some utility that we let such persons in," she adds.

Educationists feel that children stand overexposed to mass media and already have a pre-conceived notion about various brands, thanks to the hummable ad jingles. Disturbing them in their class, by coming in to distribute packs of goodies, not only vacillates their attention but also defeats the whole purpose of classroom education.

However, people from the corporate would think differently. They feel that by introducing the product in the classrooms they are able to interact with their target audience directly. Children also do not resist for they get goods free of cost and a product makes an impact.

Who cares about ethics? ‘Rules are for fools’. This is what smart manager believe in. So long as they achieve their sales target, nothing is against the rules, even if that means disturbing a child in his classroom. And how are teachers and parents going to react if their child carries a free demo pack of wafers, along with his homework, in his schoolbag? That is a million-dollar question.