Co-Co’s AdverSmarts

In the Co-Co’s AdverSmarts unit, you will meet Co-Co Crunch, a popular cereal who asks players to help build his Web site by selecting five features – or gimmicks – for the site. As you play the game, Co-Co explains how advertising companies use gimmicks (Advertising tricks) on Web sites to promote products and brands to kids. The unit explores the following marketing tricks:

1. Theme and Setting – Commercial sites for children seamlessly integrate the product or brand with a fantasy-based setting that mimics children’s books and movies, making them feel more like entertainment than advertising. The setting is usually one that children can customize to their tastes, creating an environment they feel is “their space” without adult interference.

2. Slogans – Marketers create catchy slogans such as “I can” or “Just do it.” Slogans

can also include “weasel words” – deceptive words or phrases that can be misleading: for example, “The taste of real…” or “The fruity smelling part of a nutritional meal.”

3. Characters – Commercial Web sites often use appealing brand-related cartoon characters to attract children’s attention and make them identify with the brand or product.

4. Activities – Unlike television or print advertising, the interactive aspects of the Internet allow marketers to add features that ensure kids will spend more time playing with the brand or product. These features include:

a. Advergames – games featuring the brand, product and spokescharacter.

 b. Create-your-own activities – Allowing children to customize packaging or other branded materials encourages them to identify with the brand.

 c. Online videos – videos are usually just commercials for the company’s product which aren’t subject to the same restrictions as children’s TV advertising.

5. Online Incentives, Freebies and Word of Mouth Tactics – Sophisticated technologies make it easy for marketers to collect information from young people for marketing research and to target individual children with personalized advertising. Online marketers also use the technology to run viral ad campaigns, in which children themselves market the product to their friends.

o E-cards – Many sites offer free e-cards so visitors can send branded images and messages to their friends.

o Memberships and clubs – These features are used to encourage repeat visits to the Web site, promising more games and activities with future visits and full membership. They also give the impression of a “popular” online community and allow marketers to collect personal and consumer information through the registration process.

o Contests and sweepstakes – Marketers create contests to generate excitement around a brand or product and to collect information from kids who enter the contest.

Co-Co’s AdverSmarts Game:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/special_initiatives/games/coco/flash/start.html