Strollerderby : branding

Hannah Montana's Gone Fruity

JeanneSager — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:16:00 GMT

I'm all for a brand using its sway with kids for good, but do we really need Hannah Montana bananas?

What about Mickey Mouse apples? High School Musical avocados?

Disney has gotten healthy to face the childhood obesity crisis head on, cutting ties with McDonald's (you'll notice there are no Disneyfied happy meals on your summer road trip this year) and slapping giant mouse ears on good, wholesome fare.

So, is it working? According to a look by the Washington Post, yes. When supermarket chain Winn-Dixie linked its bagged apples to High School Musical, sales spiked by forty-seven percent. The Disney Garden line is now appearing in eighteen of the top twenty mass and grocery retailers in the states, and sales grew seventy percent from 2007 to 2008.

I can admit I've fallen victim. My daughter needed a grab and go snack, and she saw Mickey apple slices on the shelves. She asked because they were Mickey. I bought because they were apples. With the same characters in a different aisle on sugar-packed "fruit" snacks, the real thing worked for me. We've also been known to pick up Princess soup because she begged for princesses, and my first introduction to Hannah Montana came in the supermarket when my daughter started shrieking about the pop star on her yogurt. Again, yogurt, much better than potato chips! Trust me - their branding is working on my impressionable three-year-old.

But I'm not sure how I feel about Disney selling health food to my kid. Is it better than peddling the junk? Sure. But does it have to be either or? I shy away from Sesame Street's organic pasta and breastfast offerings too, because as much as we all love Cookie Monster, he's not making me feel better about a processed box of waffles. And I'm not ready for the forecasted Mickey whole wheat chicken nuggets to replace the homemade version I make and freeze in my own kitchen.

Frankly, I'd prefer my kid make her food choices based on things like "amount of whole grains included" or "no trans-fats." I'd like to think she'd pick up an apple because we live in New York and have raised her on some of the nation's best apples, not because there's a cartoon character stamped on the flesh. Ditto avocados. They're fantastically flavorful and you can't have guacamole (yum) withouth them - so do we really need Zac Efron's mug to get them in my cart and on her plate?

Disney is such a powerful brand, I'm happy to see it inching back from the heart attack on a plate foodstuffs its traditionally backed. For parents who have had to measure just buying a requested item over the tantrum in the middle of the supermarket, it's definitely good news. Trust me, been there, heard the screeching. But I can't help wishing food would just go back to being food, no Hannah Montana, no Elmo, no Mickey. It's why I've fought the organic branding too.

Because in fifteen years, she won't be picking food because it has her favorite superhero printed on the front of the bag. She'll just have to go with her gut, and I'd like to think it's one filled with healthy choices.

Image: Washington Post

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Save Up Now for a College Coach So Your Kid Can Go Ivy

Karen Murphy — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:03:00 GMT

It's not enough that you've got to be filling out preschool applications before your morning sickness ends. No, if you want your kid to ~~not suck~~ succeed in life, it's all about college. And parents are shelling out $40,000 or more to hire a coach to get their kid into the right college.

The secret? It's all about branding.

A savvy coach can assess your kid's interests, help him build an impressive resume and high school class load, and hone and fine-tune him into becoming everything he can be, and more.

I completely relate to the incredible pressure that begins in middle school to get your kid in the right "track" so they can be positioned into taking the right classes in high school and pulling the grades necessary and having the right summer job and volunteering for the right causes. Just reading this Business Week article caused me to hyperventilate a little: I have a kid who just started middle school; he's in 6th grade and I'm already thinking of what he'll be doing in high school and beyond.

But what happened to letting kids be kids? About letting them stumble a little along the way, helping them up afterward of course, but learning to make decisions? About trying on different things to see what they really like to do? Choosing a college major was painful for me at 17; does a kid really know what he wants to do for the rest of his life at, say, 12, so he'll be okay with the branding and the honing and the fine-tuning? Or are most kids simply going to go along with whatever someone tells them, and then wake up one morning fifteen years later to find out they really didn't want that MBA after all?

Are we putting too much pressure on our kids, and adding to that with these ridiculous coaches?

Frankly, I'm a bit torn on this one. I have a smart kid. He'll probably do well at whatever he chooses, and I'd like to support that, encourage his interests and help him build his potential. We're already talking about him skipping a grade next year. I'm a parent like all of you, and as a parent I want my kid to be happy and do well at whatever he chooses, and help him get there. But where do I draw the line? I haven't got an extra $40K to blow on a coach, fortunately, but plenty of helicopterish parents will likely get themselves even deeper into debt to do what they think is best for their kids.

We talk about slowing down as adults, parents, and families. We talk about building priorities and letting go of things that don't matter. We talk about focusing on what's really important in our lives. I think we should start with our kids, so maybe they don't have to go through the same sort of introspective, life-altering process that we did.

You Do Have Your Kid's Domain Name Reserved Already, Don't You?

Karen Murphy — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:43:00 GMT

I made fun of this once before, and maybe it smacks of "branding" but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense: more and more parents today are reserving domain names for their kids at birth. And why not? We are in an increasingly online-oriented society, and even though there can be hundreds if not thousands of "Karen Murphy"s, there can be only one karenmurphy.com (though if you Google me, I'm the #4 result, which is amazing considering it's not even my legal name).

Of course, there's no guarantee that we'll still be connecting with people in 15-20-25 years the way we are now, but it doesn't cost all that much to reserve a domain name in your child's name and keep renewing it over the years (though GoDaddy is EVIL, I tell you! Resist!), but if your kid's name is Hell, Superman, or Charley Willie Horse Dick, you probably won't have to dash right away to the domain-name people just yet, as I don't think the lines will be very long.