Brandwashed Read online

  And this doesn’t just happen in rats. A 2007 study of 1,044 mother-and-child pairs at Harvard Medical School found that the children of women who gained “excessive weight” during pregnancy were four times more likely to become overweight in early childhood than those born to mothers who “gained inadequate weight.”4 In other words, even controlling for genetic, dietary, and other behavioral factors, mothers who ate more gave birth to children more likely to eat more. “If [a mother] eats healthy food, the child will prefer healthy food,” explains researcher Josephine Todrank, PhD. Todrank conducted a two-year study on pregnant mothers and fetuses at the University of Colorado School of Medicine that concluded that a pregnant mother’s diet not only sensitizes a fetus to those fragrances and flavors but physically transforms the fetal brain, thereby affecting what the baby consumes in the future.5

  It turns out that just as with music, we also develop preferences for specific tastes and flavors in the womb. There’s real biological credence for this; it’s been found that strong tastes and aromas—like garlic—pass through the mother’s amniotic fluid and are actually “tasted” by the fetus. As Minna Huotilainen explains, “All olfaction and taste sensations are mediated through the amniotic fluid floating in the nasal cavity and the mouth. It has been known for a long time that the amniotic fluid is rich in the concentration of fragrances typical to the mother’s diet.”

  This goes a long way in explaining why one study found that when a mother ate a lot of a food with the taste of garlic or vanilla during the last three months of pregnancy, the newborn chose milk that smells like garlic or vanilla over milk that didn’t,6 and a 2001 experiment found that babies whose mothers drank carrot juice during pregnancy later expressed preference for carrot-flavored cereal over the plain variety.7 Says Julie Menella, a psychobiologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, “Mothers are giving information to their offspring through what they consume during pregnancy and breast-feeding, telling them this is about what is good and safe for us to eat.”8

  Menella explains that because amniotic fluid retains the flavors and aromas of the foods, drinks, and spices consumed or inhaled by the mother, and because the unborn child’s olfactory and taste systems are fully functional by the last two trimesters, as early as week twelve, the neonate can actually detect these flavors and aromas—and develop an affinity that will influence his or her preferences as a baby and beyond. “The sense of smell is created in the womb—in the embryo,” says International Flavors and Fragrances’ group president, Nicolas Mirzayantz. “Smell is the most powerful, the most primitive, the most directly hard-wired [sense] in our brains. And the first contact with the outside world are those smells we associate with our mothers. How many foods are successful because we are primed at a young age?” he asks hypothetically. “Many. I think the first four years are instrumental.”

  Believe it or not, companies are not only onto this but are using it to their advantage. How? Well, to give one example, Kopiko—a popular, successful Philippine candy brand that can be found in even the smallest mom-and-pop store in any Philippine town, has figured out a way to win over the taste buds of the unborn. During one visit to Manila, I discovered that Kopiko distributors were apparently supplying pediatricians and doctors with Kopiko candies to give away to pregnant mothers in the maternity wards. Intrigued as to why, I dug a little deeper. Turns out this may have not just been about treating soon-to-be moms to a tasty snack.

  Around that time, Kopiko had been preparing to roll out a new product: coffee that happened to taste just like those candies. Interestingly, the second that the Kopiko coffee did hit the shelves, its success was phenomenal—particularly among children. Yes, kids, who would normally never go within a mile of the stuff, turned out to love the taste of Kopiko coffee. In focus groups, both parents and children spoke not just of the brand’s round, smooth taste but of the feelings of nostalgia and belonging it evoked. What’s more, when I polled mothers who’d sucked on Kopiko candies while pregnant, many told me that when they’d given their fussy, screaming newborns a small dose of Kopiko coffee, it had instantly, and magically, calmed these babies down (a parenting strategy I can’t say I recommend). Today, a mere four years into its existence, Kopiko coffee is the third-largest brand in the Philippines.

  Baby’s First Brands

  As a kid growing up in Denmark, by the time I was five I was already preoccupied with a handful of brands. LEGO. Bang & Olufsen (the supermodern Danish designer of everything from sound systems to telephones). James Bond, the pop group Abba (I hereby apologize). And the fact is, thirty-five years later, the brands I loved as a child still influence my tastes and buying choices. For one thing, I always (unconsciously) dress like James Bond (all in black) and wear a Rolex watch. When I’m on the road, which is approximately ten months out of the year, I almost always stay in hotels that recall the ultramodern Bang & Olufsen style. And while my clothes may be all black, I’ve always been drawn to colorful art. I could never quite figure out why, until a few years ago, when it struck me that every single painting in my house was made up of yellow, red, blue, black, and white—exactly those five basic LEGO colors I was so obsessed with as a kid.

  All right, I confess it, I still listen to Abba every now and again. In my defense, I am Scandinavian.

  I’m living proof that not only are very young children aware of brands, but we cling to the brands we liked as children well into our adult lives. But to find out just how common this phenomenon is, I enlisted SIS International Research, a New York–based global custom market research and strategic business research company, which has served over 70 percent of the Fortune 500 and many of the world’s most influential organizations in the course of conducting research projects in over 120 countries, to conduct a study looking at how our childhood preferences shape our buying habits as adults. In surveying 2,035 children and adults, SIS found that 53 percent of adults and 56 percent of teens used brands they remembered from their childhoods, especially foods, beverages, and health-care and consumer/household goods—if you think companies and their marketers don’t know this and aren’t actively marketing to young children left and right, think again. As you’ll see at various points throughout this book, marketers and advertisers have many clever tricks up their sleeves to brandwash those young (and impressionable) consumers—in an attempt to secure their loyalty for life.

  This may help explain why children under the age of three years represent an approximately $20 billion market to advertisers. Yup, these are the very same children who watch roughly forty thousand television ads a year and who, as I’ve found in my studies over the years, know the names of more branded characters than of actual animals. What most parents probably don’t notice, however, is the extent to which babies as young as eighteen months are picking up subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues in their environment about brands and products.

  What’s the first word recognized by most kids all over the world? No, it’s not “Mom” or “Dad.” It’s “McDonald’s” (or “Ronald”), according to Bryan Urbick, CEO of the Consumer Knowledge Centre in Middlesex, UK. True, most eighteen-month-old babies can’t physically articulate the word “McDonald’s,” but what they can do is recognize the fast-food chain’s red and yellow colors, roofline, golden arches, and logo. Then they can jab their chunky little fingers at a McDonald’s from the backseat of a minivan, at which point Dad pulls into the parking lot and everyone eats and feels stuffed and happy. Thus, that baby’s recognition of McDonald’s becomes layered with emotional reward, familiarity, and, of course, taste, sound, and smell.

  It gets worse. As early as two decades ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that “nearly all of America’s six-year-olds could identify Joe Camel, who was just as familiar to them as Mickey Mouse.” My guess is that today, kids as young as three or four can not only recognize Joe Camel but associate him with the brand.9

  The main reason that eighteen-month-old babies can recognize brands l
ike McDonald’s and Camel is that in today’s media-saturated culture, younger and younger children are being exposed to more media and advertising than ever before. By the age of three months, 40 percent of all infants are watching screen media regularly,10 and by the time these same children are two, the number rises to 90 percent. And let’s not forget the advertising these toddlers are now being bombarded with on the Internet, cell phones, video games, and billboards.

  And all this makes a more powerful impression than you’d think. By the age of six months, babies are able to form “mental images” of corporate logos and mascots.11 Which is no surprise given that these days, everything from bibs to strollers is adorned with licensed characters from Elmo to SpongeBob to Tigger to Buzz Lightyear—the very same iconic figures that will continue selling these kids food, toys, and more throughout their childhoods. According to Dr. Allen Kanner, a renowned child psychologist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, “Recent studies have shown that by the time they are 36 months old, American children recognize an average of 100 brand logos.”12 In one 2007 experiment, when children aged three to five were shown a dozen flash cards with assorted corporate logos on each, most of the children screamed “Target!” with delight when they spotted the store’s signature red bull’s-eye.

  Scarier still, babies are able to actually request brands by name as soon as they can speak. In one notable study, a twenty-three-month-old was heard to repeat the mantra “Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it,” while a second twenty-three-month-old gestured to the bottle of beer his father was gripping, murmuring, “Diet Pepsi, one less calorie.”13 By the first grade, an average child can recite roughly two hundred brand names—a figure that makes sense, seeing as most children receive an average of seventy new toys and gadgets a year. By age ten, a Nickelodeon study found, the average child has committed anywhere between three hundred and four hundred brands to memory.

  It’s not just that these young kids are simply learning the names of brands, either. They are actually beginning to form preferences for them. According to a study published in a 2010 issue of Pediatrics, when forty preschoolers were given a choice between two versions of a particular food (in this case, graham crackers, fruit snacks, and carrots), the only difference being that one package had a licensed character on it and the other didn’t, they not only chose the branded version, they actually reported that the food with the character tasted better, reports study author Christina Roberto, a doctoral student at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.14 In another study, sixty-three preschoolers were asked to taste pairs of five completely identical foods: hamburgers, chicken nuggets, French fries, milk, and carrots. The first set was wrapped in plain old logo-free packaging. The second pair was packaged in a McDonald’s wrapper. By a long shot, the children rated the tastes of the foods and drinks higher if they believed they were from McDonald’s. This even went for the carrots15 (and the last time I looked, McDonald’s doesn’t even sell carrots).

  As Douglas Rushkoff writes in his book Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say, “By seeding their products and images early, [the] marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-Weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, ‘They’re great!’ ”16

  According to Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy, children who can recognize logos by age eighteen months not only grow up to prefer these brands but grow up to believe the brands correspond to their own personal qualities (or desired personal qualities), like being cutting-edge, strong, fast, or sophisticated.17 What’s even more frightening is that even three-year-olds already feel social pressure to use certain brands and already believe that wearing, owning, or consuming certain brands can help them make their way through life. In a 2009 study on the topic published in the journal Psychology and Marketing, when one preschooler was asked about LEGO, he said, “It’s really fun and I have to have it. If I have it, everyone wants to come to my house and play. If you don’t have it, they maybe don’t like you.” Said another, “McDonald’s has a playground so you can play there and everyone likes you.”18

  Some food marketers in particular are using an especially pernicious strategy (and one we’ll be talking about a lot more in chapter 3) to target young and impressionable children: ads disguised as entertainment. As a New York Times cover story recently reported, many food companies, “often selling sugar cereals and junk food, are using multimedia games, online quizzes, and cell phone apps to build deep ties with young consumers.” More specifically, as a 2009 report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University found, three major food companies—General Mills, Kellogg’s and Post—were using games to “hawk cereals ranked among the least nutritious,” including Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, Trix, Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles. As the article reports, a game on the Lucky Charms Web site invites kids on virtual adventures with Lucky the Leprechaun; Apple Jacks offers an iPhone app called Race to the Bowl Rally, a racing-car game in which kids collect Apple Jack Cereal Pieces for extra race points; and the Honey Nut Cheerios site lets kids create their own comic strip featuring BuzzBee, the cereal’s iconic mascot.19 In blurring the line between advertising and entertainment, these ads-as-games have several benefits for the companies in question. For one, they allow marketers to circumvent the regulations on advertising junk food on television. For another, they spread virally—as kids play or share these games with their friends, they unwittingly become guerrilla brand ambassadors. And third, as we’ll talk more about in chapter 3, these games are inherently addictive in nature. In short, they employ not just one but several powerful yet hidden persuaders.

  As we’ll see throughout this book, food marketers are not alone in these tactics. Companies of all stripes know full well that advertisements also begin to shape children’s lasting preferences at an alarmingly young age and that the younger we are when we begin using a product, the more likely we are to keep using it for the rest of our lives. Which is why makers of so many distinctly adult products are targeting their ads and marketing to inappropriately young customers. Let’s look at how.

  Unleashing the Sex Kitten Inside

  Studies show that today, both boys and girls are reaching puberty on average a full year earlier than they did decades ago, a phenomenon known in marketing circles as “precocious puberty.” So what? Well, puberty means products—razors, shaving cream, face wash, acne gel, deodorant, makeup, and more. And you better believe companies are taking advantage of that fact. Seattle-based manufacturer Dot Girl, for example, sells a “first period kit,” a pink or robin’s-egg-blue pack decorated with cartoon characters and youthful logos. Inside, your eleven-year-old daughter will find an assortment of feminine hygiene products, including a heating pad to alleviate cramps. According to Dot Girl cofounder Terri Goodwin, “We wanted to keep it on the young side.” Says Toyna Chin, the San Francisco–based founder of Petite Amie, which carries the kits and sells them primarily to young teens, “Young girls are your first brand users. It’s important for any company to try and get that target audience as young as possible.”20

  According to a report from the NPD Group, a consumer research company, “From 2007 to 2009, the percentage of girls ages 8 to 12 who regularly use mascara and eyeliner nearly doubled—to 18 percent from 10 percent for mascara, and to 15 percent from 9 percent for eyeliner.”21 As journalist Peggy Orenstein says in her recent book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, close to half of six- to nine-year-old girls regularly use lipstick and lip gloss, and “tween girls now spend more than $40 million a month on beauty products.”22 That’s why Dylan’s Candy Bar, a high-end confectionery store on New York’s Upper East Side, offers a beauty line that includes “cupcake body lotion” and strawberry licorice “lip saver” (according to the Web s
ite, “Lips should always be candy-luscious and sweet to kiss”).23 It’s also why there’s a Hannah Montana Makeover Set, Barbie makeup, and hair-straightening products that feature seven-year-olds on the box. It’s also why Bonne Bell markets its cosmetics to girls as young as seven, the age at which it claims girls “become adept at using a lip gloss wand.” Even Nair, the hair-removal brand, has released “Nair Pretty,” a line aimed at ten- to fifteen-year-olds or, as it’s put in the industry, “first-time hair removers.”24

  More appalling still, as the Huffington Post recently reported, Abercrombie and Fitch, the popular clothing retailer among the tween set, has begun marketing and selling padded bikini tops to girls as young as eight. As bloggers on Babble.com aptly pointed out, “The push-up bra is effectively a sex tool, designed to push the breasts up and out, putting them front and center where they’re more accessible to the eye (and everything else). How is that okay for second graders?”

  In my book, it isn’t.

  Still, nothing is as wildly age-inappropriate as a toy that Tesco, the UK retailer, released in 2006: the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit, a pole-dancing play set marketed to females under ten—as something that will help them “unleash the sex kitten inside.” Not surprisingly, outraged parents lobbied to have the product removed from shelves, and I can’t say I blame them.

  And how do you create a lifelong drinker? Start him or her off early by rolling out sweet, flavored, colored, sodalike beverages (laden with alcohol), known in the industry as “alcopops.” Though they are allegedly intended to be consumed by adults, an American Medical Association study found that alcopops are most popular among thirteen-year-old girls and that these kid-friendly, candylike cocktails make up 29 percent of the alcohol this group consumes.