Tots Recognize Brands Such as M&Ms & More!

If you have a toddler aged two, beware, your child already recognizes brands such as M&Ms, Wall’s ice cream, McDonald’s, Nike, Mercedes, and even, oh goodness, Heineken.

So concludes new research published in the May 2005 issue of the Journal of Applied Development Psychology.

"Our study clearly shows that exposure to television has consequences for the brand recognition of even the youngest children," points out the study from the University of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR.

And, surprise, surprise, advertisers have been targeting younger and younger kids. (Age six used to be the limit. Now toddlers are singled out, too.)

It strikes me as mighty scary to have brand-loyal toddlers running around (whether here in America or overseas). As I’m sure we’ve all witnessed,  little ones often try to dictate (via temper tantrums and more) to their parents what they want to eat, where they want to go, etc. Sure makes the role of a parent more tough.

Not surprisingly, as The Scotsman observes, "The report has provoked concern that very young children could be unwittingly influenced by unscrupulous marketing firms."

By the way, the UK seems to be ahead of the US in monitoring this phenomenon. Their Advertising Standard Agency’s broadcast code already seeks to protect children from potentially harmful advertising. I’m not sure how effective it is, but in America, we should follow suit and lay down stringent guidelines.

Yikes, I feel very uncomfortable and nervous with our nation’s kids already become brand loyal to Coca-Cola and M&Ms. How the heck am I supposed to get them off sweets if they’ve been convinced while still in the baby carriage to eat and drink their products?

Special thanks to Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for alerting me to this story.

4 thoughts on “Tots Recognize Brands Such as M&Ms & More!”

  1. Connie is doing a lovely job of helping people eat better and live better. Personally, I’m a vegan and some of the sugar-free people get way off course in my opinion by trashing carbohydrates wholesale when, in fact, carbohydrates comprise the fuel that we operate on as living beings. Connie’s work is very balanced: she exposes the dangers of refined sugar and unprotected simple sugars in a way that anybody with any dietary preference can support. I’m eager for the publication of SugarShock! and wish it enormous success.
    Cheers — Victoria Moran, author of Fit from Within

  2. This study just tells me that 2-year-olds watch too much TV. It’s fine to call on corporations to be more responsible about how they market to kids; I agree that they should be. But parents need to be more responsible, too. I’ve read that 30% of American children under 6 have TVs in their rooms. That’s ridiculous, IMO. TVs don’t force themselves into kids’ rooms and turn themselves on. If parents didn’t let their kids have so much access to TV, the marketers would have a much harder time getting to them.

  3. I agree with Jennifer. It is the parents’ job to shield toddlers from this stuff. Maybe as they get older, the parents can’t help it, but with toddlers it is easy. My daughter eats what I feed her and nothing else (except pieces of paper and rocks she finds on the ground that I have to fish out of her mouth). She eats homemade whole wheat bread, fruit, vegetables, cheese, etc, because that is what I feed her. She drinks water and breastmilk, because that is what I feed her. She also watches no TV. We have to train taste buds when they are little. If a two-year-old loves candy, that is the parents’ fault.

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