Vario Creative Blog

…for your first Apple product!

Yesterday I strolled into our local Apple store for a look around. It was pretty busy in there actually, but since it’s school vacation week, I can understand why.

As I walked around, pushing my 3 month old and almost 2 year old daughters in their double stroller, I was approached by a few of the store clerks. They had each individually spotted the Apple logo stickers that my husband put on the side of the baby’s car seat. Each employee chuckled as they saw the stickers (that come with pretty much any purchase… and we all know that this household has every Apple product x2 known to man!) They thought it was funny that two little babies had already been exposed to Apple products at such an early age.

The best part though? When my almost 2 year old took out her iPhone to start playing games while I browsed the shelves. Yes, I know… she’s not even 2 yet and she’s got an iPhone. The funniest thing is that the kid knows exactly how to use the apps that we’ve put on it for her. She uses her finger to move the screen items around in her toddler games with precision. The Apple store employees were howling laughing watching her navigate around her iPhone screen.

I suppose you’re never too young to get involved and intrigued with computers… especially ones from Apple!

After a long (and still on going, but thankfully, via Webex Access Anywhere now) project in DC, and a few days off, I’m back.

I’ve got a touch of computer claw going on today, due to a little overindulgence in Guitar Hero III and Lego Star Wars, on the new Playstation 3 that Santa brought.

So now the tree is down (removed at 3pm Xmas day, by a wife who had her fill of Xmas spirit), and I’m back at work. I’ve got something interesting coming up, but I can’t say anything about it yet.

Since you might be one of the millions that bought new computers or internet accessible devices, a few words of advice:

• Kids need to be watched online. Always…
• Use parental filters, and keep them on safe sites. I particularly like:
  • Webkinz World, even though the marketing and real world product tie ins are a bit much, they do provide a safe, easy to use and fun environment for kids.
  • Nick Jr. – decent games, and other than tie in to their own television content, not to over the top (by Saturday morning TV standards).
  • MIT Scratch – actually more of a drag and drop programming language. This will start your kids on the path to geekdom.
  • Google Earth – my kids love finding places, and I love talking with them about the world.
  • Wikipedia – it’s gotten to be the de facto source, even if it may get gamed once in a while. Whenever your kid says “What’s a…” you should whisk them off to Wikipedia to find out.
• Remember, you’re the adult. You need to know what they are doing.
• IM and email is not appropriate for children under 15 years old. There should be no unsupervised contact between them. When my daughters need to email something, they need to get me to do it for them.
• Kids love YouTube – but remember, there’s a lot of content that isn’t right for them. YouTube should be a fully supervised activity. Dancing cats are good. Punks in shopping carts with baseball bats, not good. You’ll figure out the difference.

Okay then, let’s be safe out there…

For those that read about the Alpa Girl marketing yesterday, I’m gonna make a prediction – my Geek Girl is gonna out earn your Alpha Girl! 

MIT came up with a computer language called “Scratch” (the site is swamped now, read this article in the Boston Globe to get an idea)  which uses graphical representations to allow kids (and everyone) to learn the basics of programming and logic.  The software has a speedy ramp up and kids generally can have their first program running the first day.  Pretty neat stuff.

I’ll be evaluating this very soon with my two test subjects.  Madison is a 9 year old girl, and will be pretty quick to let me know if it’s “lame.”  She’s a good use case for your average young girl.  MacKenzie is 8, and will more likely represent the “geek girl” as she’s very techinically savvy, having hacked my password two months ago.  She also is apparently doing “Webkinz Support” for the 2nd grade, judging by the calls she gets during the afternoon and early evening.  “No, you need to right click there…”  Never mind the discussion we had the other day about relational databases.

So we’ll see how it goes.  I’ll report back over the next few days.  This will postpone the review of Webkinz World, Millsbury and BarbieGirls by a few days, as my assistants may be a little busy.

As a parent of an 8 and a 9 year old girl, I’m learning a lot about marketing lately from the other side of the fence.  The funny thing is, some of the things I see working are exactly the types of things we marketing types have been railing against, such as the SecondLife.com type virtual world marketing. 

The thing is that while I may have grown up in a world without an Internet, my daughters have grown up in a world where they expect it.  They could teach us all a little bit about usability and user expectation (a topic for another day).  The type of thing that’s on fire right now for them and their network of friends is the WebKinz World virtual experience, where you buy a plush toy which is available at a$10 price point (makes it easy to convince a softhearted dad), and it comes with a code attached.  They then go online and “adopt” their toy, and set up it’s home in the virtual world.  The kids can buy stuff for the toy, such as furnishings for it’s house, like a pool, by using Webkinz Dollars, which they earn by playing games, etc.   Those games may or may not have a subtle marketing message to them (honestly, I haven’t spent a lot of time evalutating that).  They can also interact with their friends via the Clubhouse, where they are restricted to speed key type text messages, meaning they must select their messages to each other from a prewritten list, thus avoiding the chat issues that make parents cringe.  (More on virtual world marketing for girls tomorrow…)

This morning, there was an incredibly interesting piece on The Early Show about “Alpha Girls” (watch the video here - a must for marketers).  The crux of the story is that marketers have realized that tween age girls can be influenced by Secret Agent marketing. 

For those not familiar with the term, Secret Agent Marketing is when a hired gun is used to promote a product in a chance situation.  Such as when a liquor company hires a hot babe as an “ambassador” and she walks around the bars mentioning that “that new pomegranite liquor is excellent with vodka” and the next thing you know, every guy in the bar has tried it. 

In the Alpha Girl twist, they realize that in any group of girls, one or two exorts and inordinant amount of influence.  They identify these girls, then enlist them as “secret agents”, sending a box of stuff to be tested.  The Alpha girl has a party, and then enters her findings afterwards on a website. 

They’ve also realized that they’re excellent alpha testers, because they’ll tell you what they think about your product.  If it’s good, the product goes viral.  If it isn’t you better fix it, or forget it.

I think it’s going a step too far for me.  Little girls can be lemmings and I hate the notion that this marketing technique is blatantly exploiting them.  In some ways this represents the worst of us.  Terms like “need for disclosure” and “shill” come to mind.

Your thoughts?

David Churbuck had a great post about domain squatters today, which is definitely a must read…he calls it the “bottom of the online marketing barrel.”

It’s a bigger issue…if you have children.

I sat last weekend next to my daughters, 7 & 8, as they surfed.  At that age, spelling isn’t exactly a strong point.  As they moved around the heavily branded sites they like, such as http://www.postopia.com (Post Cereal), bratz.com, barbie.com, disney.com, they often mispelled the url.  Each time I had to interject “STOP”…

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