Children's Media

Top 5 Tips on Designing a Brand & Marketing to Children

Jenny Many Editorial Team

Building a brand which appeals to children is not easy. Kids today have grown up using smartphones and iPads. They are just as tech-savvy as their parents, if not more. Although they don’t possess the buying power, they are discerning customers and you have to design your products keeping them in mind if you want them to take to your products. Branding intended for kids becomes more of a challenge because while you’re designing your products for children, the marketing campaign has to be designed around their guardians. After all, they are the ones who will purchase your products.

Unlike with adults, branding for kids needs to be more explicit. You need to spell out why your brand is the right fit for them. Kids are not capable of deriving meaning from nuances as adults can. So, what are the most important points to remember when designing a brand aimed for the kiddie clientele? Read on below to find out.

1. Use a Lot of Color

Kids love color. So think loud and bold colors instead of neutral and understated shades to design your brand logo and product offerings. The more colorful your product packaging, the more drawn to hankering for a purchase a kid will be. Some of the more successful kid’s brands such as Playskool and Mattel have used the color spectrum to their benefit to attract a wide children’s audience base.

2. Include an Animated Figure in Your Design

Children love cartoons and animations. If you can incorporate a fun graphic image into your brand’s design, there’s nothing like it. The cartoon so included will help your brand connect with the child and stay on in his/her memory, paving the way for better recall value. Picture Ronald McDonald or Mario for Nintendo.

3. Figure out Which Tone to Use/What Message to Convey

As a brand, you must be clear about your brand message i.e. the idea of your brand that you want to portray to the public. If you’re unsure about this, your branding will lack value. If you’ve used a logo to draw the kids in, target your brand message at the parents. Craft a persona to be used when interacting with clients. Say, you’re marketing a brand for children’s toys – you need to design your products in a way that will appeal to your customer group and also assure their caretakers of their safety standards.

4. Employ Video Marketing

Both kids and adults alike consume videos. Short engaging videos can do more to push your product for purchase than anything else. Today’s kids are always found glued to their media devices and one of the best ways to grab their attention is to develop videos that will interest them in your brand and products. The best marketing videos explain how associating with their brand can add value to your lifestyle.

5. Harness the Power of Social Media

Social media can be used in a wide variety of ways. You can scour out the latest trends and reigning interests in the kid-consumer industry by being on the alert on social media. At the same time, you can tap into the huge social media presence of kids and their parents to market to them effectively. Instagram and Snapchat are the haunts of a younger demographic whereas you can rely on Facebook to find their parents sharing their lives.

Why it is Important to Have Empathy When Designing a Brand for Kids 

When you go about the design process of a brand for adults, you already have somewhat of an idea about what might or might not appeal to them. It’s because you too happen to be an adult living out your life in the same time period. However, the same does not apply for designing a kid’s brand. You are no longer a kid. You can draw on your experiences as a kid to add value to your kid’s brand but with rapid technological advancements, chances are, the way things were when you were a kid are worlds apart from how things are right now. So what do you do? You exercise your empathy.

Yes, research is important. You need to base your product and brand design on concrete data and information derived from market surveys. At the same time, having a sense of empathy helps you understand just what a kid in today’s time is looking for. Is he/she content with an aesthetically pleasing design or does the functionality matter more for them? How can you go about marketing for them so as to reap in profit?

Conclusion

A lot of time and effort goes into building a successful brand for kids. The kid-consumer market is saturated to a T and if you want your brand to stand out, you need to really offer a value that other brands have been failing to provide. You need to design your brand in such a way that it expresses the empathy and understanding you have with regard to your underage customers.

The empathy shouldn’t be limited to recognizing the needs of your target customers but their parents too. The parents will be shelling out the money needed to pay for your product. Your brand’s products then should be designed not only to provide value to the kids but to their parents too. It should be happy, healthy and safe for usage. If you can craft a brand for kid’s offerings which is multi-functional i.e. is educative while being fun and entertaining – there’s nothing quite like it. Have a game-plan ready as to how you will proceed with designing your kid’s plan once the initial market research has been carried out. Next, understand parental requirements from a product addressed for kids. When you have this down, go about ensuring that your brand is capable of adding some unique value to a kid’s life. If you’ve followed all of these checkpoints, you shouldn’t have a problem developing a successful and profitable brand for kids. Wishing you the very best in your endeavors!

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