Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much - Marian Wright Edelman

I’m noticing a growing trend when it comes to communicating with children. There seems to be a shift from offline channels to online channels. In Ireland legislation is forcing advertisers to change their strategies, and in the general world communicating with the audience at a given point in time is becoming more difficult.

For example, in the UK the most popular magazine for teens is the official PS2 magazine. However gaming TV shows have never had the same success; in fact most people highlight Gamesmaster, an early nineties Channel 4 offering, as the best incarnation of a gaming TV show.

The BBC are due to launch a new show soon, but it has already fallen into the black hole of TV schedules - the Friday night slot. Of course, you’ll struggle to find a teenager watching television then. In fact if that’s the time you want to communicate with that age group in Ireland, then unless you have your message written on a cheap can of beer, your message is going to fall on deaf ears.

Worryingly though, organisations are turning to online campaigns like Nestle’s Chocapic offering (via adverblog). I use the word worryingly because it’s going to be the big corporations like McDonalds that have the bankroll to use the medium to ‘build relationships’ with children. While these campaigns claim to move from the approach of ‘buy my product’, few of them offer any real educational aspect and seem to play on the popularity of computer games.

Because of the scale and reach of the Internet I can’t see any way to enforce standards across the medium when communicating with children. Am I going over the top on this one or do I have legitimate cause for concern?

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