Consumer tsar attacks ‘creepy' child marketing practices

UK-- The head of the government's consumer watchdog and a leading research academic have called into question the way online marketers use children to research and sell new products.

Ed Mayo, the CEO of Consumer Focus, blasted some of the techniques currently in use – including the collection of browsing data for behaviourally targeted advertising – as “insidious and downright creepy”.

He told Research: “Marketing to children is a sensitive area and rightly so. Marketing has grown in sophistication in leaps and bounds, so it is no surprise that what is and is not responsible practice should be a matter of public debate.

Mayo has co-authored a book with academic researcher Agnes Nairn, which attacks the use of children as ‘brand ambassadors' and accuses firms that collect data for targeted advertising of “stalking kids online”.

Nairn told Research: “This is absolutely not an attack on the whole industry. There is some massively good online child marketing from some very responsible companies who are getting more responsible by the day.”

She said that the aim of the book was to highlight “grey areas” in online child marketing and research and that “it is now down to the industry to come back and agree or disagree”.

Nairn said there is a “small issue about fairness in recompense” in online surveys for children but her main concern is the use of kids as online ‘brand ambassadors'.

“If you're asking a child to recommend, and effectively sell a product that's very different from researching a product,” she said. “To me, there is a line that has perhaps been crossed. Is it like sugging? You're pretending that the kids are taking part in a research project but actually what your doing is getting the cool kids to sell something on to their friends. We need to have a debate about this.”

Mayo and Nairn's book, Consumer Kids, is published next week.

Author: James Verrinder