In 2000, Naomi Klein published No Logo, her book on brands, marketing and sweatshop labour. In it, she explored the activities of global sportswear company Nike and its use of 'cool hunters'. These are designers who scour the streets for the edgiest kids in order to identify forward trends, co-opt them, then sell them back to the kids and on to the mainstream. These 'fashion forward' kids were most often poor, young, African American men.
The 'cool hunters' also gave Nike merchandise to those at the cutting edge, knowing that they'd make the brand edgier, infuse it with meaning and increase its market value. In selling the 'swoosh' to mainstream America, Nike sold an image of the lifestyles of these kids as edgy and cool. But the reality for those living it every day was the edge of poverty. They were overwhelmingly forgotten and failed by the system.
Not long after No Logo was published, I interviewed the author and asked her if she saw it as a problem that Nike had integrated itself into the lives of these kids. Klein's reply still resonates today: the problem wasn't that 'cool hunters' were interested in poor African American kids. The problem was that nobody else was.
Every year, marketers and 'cool hunters' spend vast amounts listening to what kids want, not because they care about kids, but because every year the global 'tween' market (children aged six to 13) spends around $328 billion of their own money, and influence another $2 trillion of parental spending.
Marketers know that even toddlers develop brand loyalties, and that winning them over early means 'owning' them for life. They call it 'cradle-to-grave' marketing.
As a result, children are faced with more ads than ever. Advertisers reach them wherever they go, through radio, sports sponsorships, packaging and in-store displays; through supermarket checkouts, flyers, outdoor ads and licensed characters. They use celebrity endorsements, premiums and fundraising, product placement, stealth and viral marketing, magazines, newspapers and the internet.
On average, kids see tens of thousands of ads each year. And that's just on TV.
To reach our kids, marketers employ child psychologists, childhood development theory and medical technologies like fMRI to measure the brain's response to marketing. They follow them as they shop, infuse products with familiar scents and snoop through their bedrooms. Some go online to pose as kids and spruik their brands, while others recruit children to sell to unwitting peers under