Day One - Part One
The first day was chaired by Paul Kurnit, President/COO, Griffin Bacal, one of the "old hands" in the kids biz. He opened the proceedings by giving a rousing speech - a call for the outside world to take kids advertising seriously: "You should all be proud to be part of this industry. [M]any of the captains of industry don't see our work. They don't understand it. They don't respect it. Kids advertising has blazed many communication trails... This is a sophisticated industry we're in. There's a lot less room for error in the kids industry than many others. We have to catch the wave...no, stay ahead of the wave...." Paul then took us on a quick tour of the current kids market, outlining the two main points supporting the brief for bringing respect to kids advertising, both of which came back repeatedly throughout the entire conference: Kids are an important and powerful separate market, which is growing by leaps and bounds; and kids ad-supported media are spreading like weeds across the landscape.

The rest of the day built on Paul's start. Michael Cohen, Ph.D., gave us a quick Kids 101 - what makes them tick. Precise, witty, and informative, Cohen explored the same territory elucidated so well by Dan Acuff (see AWM, "The Entertainment/Marketing/Exploitation Relationship: Two Takes," May 1998 issue) and Gene Del Vecchio, among others, adding timely information from his ongoing research. The main update: media is pushing kids into the world more quickly, and kids are getting older younger - even more so than a few years ago, with strong physical indications that puberty has advanced two years! (An interesting subject for another venue: What was the age of puberty in the past? Was mid-20th century puberty held back by the Victorian nature of society, or is this advance a major turning point in evolution?) Furthermore, Cohen spoke before the Starr Report hit the mass media with shock waves that must have accelerated this trend.

Following on was a panel discussion on media brand building (product brand building came later), featuring representatives from everyone's favorite vertically and/or horizontally integrated media conglomerates: Time Warner (Cartoon Network), Viacom (Nickelodeon), News Corp. (Fox Family Worldwide), Disney (Disney/ABC Radio Networks), and Time Warner again (Sports Illustrated for Kids). Not surprisingly, they all agreed that the future will belong to strong brands that are backed by strong, vertically and/or horizontally integrated media behemoths that can squash any upstarts. What else did you expect? Actually, before the lawyers call, I will admit that no one said anything about squashing upstarts, but it sure was strong sub-text. This panel also provided my highlight reel with the, "Did I really hear that?" quote of the day: "This year we slimed some nuns. The kids loved it."

Day One - Part Two
After lunch, we segued over to product brand territory. For those of us interested in animation, this was perhaps the most compelling part of the first day, but not because it told us anything new. There was very little about actual brands, but lots about characters in brand building advertising. It was mostly very old - old products, old characters, old campaigns. The Trix rabbit was the touchstone (both in cereal and - a new product - yogurt), with a strong supporting role for Ronald McDonald, and multiple parts for Fred and Barney in Pebbles cereal advertising. Through a panel and a separate presentation (by one of animation's biggest fans, Alice Germanetti, Senior Partner & Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather), it came through strong and clear that it's becoming more and more difficult to launch a new character. In fact, nearly every speaker told the audience that the best way to use a character was to go out and license one (either animated or real, i.e., either Bugs or Michael Jordan), with the obvious warnings about making sure the licensed character fits the brand profile and doesn't overpower the brand. Why? It costs too much to launch a new character, it takes too long (the average brand manager is only around for 18 months, much too short a time frame to really seat a character), there's too much "noise" out there, and launching a product is tough enough without launching a character at the same time.