The Marketing Conference Blog

We have reasons as to why we can’t do certain things until we are of a certain age. I’m fairly sure I don’t have to list the majority of them.

I find marketing to those who we have deemed to be financially immature in a legal sense to be amoral at best and immoral at worst.

As this article points out:

Protecting children under the age of 13 was one of the biggest issues addressed by the latest Mobile Marketing Association Consumer Best Practices Guidelines released on July 17. [report pdf]

The guidelines are there because there’s obviously a school of thought that believes children should be protected from over-zealous marketing. However, the only suggestions the article highlights are the use of ‘exhortative language’ such as ‘only’ and ‘just’ and adding mandatory double opt-ins when using interactive voice response or the mobile Web.

As effectiveness goes, we’re probably talking ashtrays on motorbikes.

I know the argument that children are going to spend their money on something, and who is anyone to dictate what that something may be. Children especially love their phones. They should have access to ringtones and other assorted modifications that suit their lifestyle choices and represent who they are as little people just like the big people. It’s their choice. It’s up to marketing associations to decide the moral boundaries as to what can or cannot be peddled.

In fact, this has more to do with the morality of marketers than those being marketed to.

But, I’ll ask anyone to find me someone under the age of thirteen who is able to purchase an iPhone and sign a two-year contract with AT&T independently without requiring a co-signer or raiding the ‘mom bank’. (Spoiled little brats with monstrous trust funds in place that they’ve been able to access since birth don’t count.)

Find me a child along those lines and then we can have a discussion.