Usage of children in endorsements:

The rule of advertising is to use celebrity or people in ads who relate to the target audience. E.g. A sportsman would endorse a sports shoes not a filmstar. The rule doesn’t hold in the continuously changing market in India. Especially if it involves children. There was a time when children were used in ads only for children’s products such as nutrition category (Bournvita, Chyawanprash) or ice creams (Amul or Kwality) or chocolates (Cadbury).

As time progressed children were used more and more in ads for products not bought for them but were for household consumption such as consumer durables (Airconditoners, refrigerators, television, Audio systems) or food (Maggi, type of masala). Pester power was considered to be the weapon then. Things have not changed. Pester power still remains but the thought process behind using children for an array or products/ services has changed. Nowadays children are used for all types of product/ service categories. Aviation, banks (Axis bank, IDBI bank, Kotak bank), Cars (Volkswagen, Maruti), insurance (ICICI Pru, HDFC Standard Life, Metlife, Max newyork), detergent (Rin, Ariel, Tide, Wheel), oral care (Colgate, Pepsodent), tourism (Mahindra resorts), real estate (almost all ads in print media such as Lodha, DLF, HDIL), mutual funds, retail (big bazaar), Textile (Raymonds), telecommunications (Vodafone), oil and gas(Jaypee), cement, steel to name a few companies. You name a category and children are used. The rationale being that research has shown ads with children having more recall value than its ads of competitors without children. Children are endearing to all of us. This could be the reason for the high recall.

Communication is all about the message rather than the characters involved. The effectiveness of an ad is in understanding the way to reach the target audience and knowing the idea to make the target audience relate to the message and thus the product/ service. This has been understood by the Indian advertising industry.

Thus we see the latest offering from Metlife fixed income plan where we see the grand son blackmailing his grandmother for buying stuff and relating it to fixed income from financial products. A child in an ad who does not know what insurance means.