Smashing Ideas Inc.'s creative director discusses the do's and don'ts of marketing to kids.

The FCC put new rules into effect on January 1, 2006 to ensure more educational programming for kids in the digital age, and to limit placing web addresses on-screen to push kids to buy products online. When these rules were formed in 2005, the only thought I had was "Wow, the FCC totally doesn't get what's going on. Like, they hella don't get it." Because the digital landscape is changing so rapidly, the impact of new marketing tactics cannot be properly evaluated.

 It's well known that children younger than eight have difficulty distinguishing advertising from educational programming, and there have long been protections in place to distinguish the two on television. But how do you distinguish ads from content on the web? How about on cell phones or iTV? How about advertising in video games? Entertainment companies and marketers target kids in new ways every day. The reality is that the digital world no longer allows for the separation of advertising and content. There is no separation between marketing and entertaining content online. How do I know? We can't even define the separation of projects internally at my company. Is this original content or is it marketing services? Nine times out of 10, it's a combination of both. You may be able to separate Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, but you can't separate entertainment from advertising any more. They are BFF (Best Friends Forever!)

Let's look at the current media landscape for kids:

• Kids spend an average of 6.5 hours each day using media, and they multitask while doing it. (That's the equivalent of a full-time job!)
• In any given day, 68 percent of children under TWO will use a screen media for just over two hours. (Toddler bloggers?)
• 72 percent of parents think using a computer "mostly helps" children's learning. (They can't all be bad parents, can they?)
• 30 percent of children under three years old have a TV in their bedroom. (Okay their parents are bad).
• 100 percent of people would be horrified to know what their pre-teenager's MySpace.com profile says. (Horrified. Trust me on this one.)

Now take a guess at how many brand names a two year old can recognize: 50? 100? At two years old, the average kid can recognize over 200 brand names. At three years old they begin to prefer one brand over another (Eew, Skippy? Are you kidding? Jif is hella better, mom!)* With kids viewing upwards of 4,000 advertising and marketing messages each day, there is really no way to shield them from the onslaught of commercialism. And now that the lines between entertainment and marketing are blurred beyond distinction, should we worry even more? Should we? I say, "Mmmm nope. Not as long as kids are in control and having fun."

As a creative director, I develop content and marketing for kids because kids are fun. It's their job to have fun and they're really good at it. I like making sure they know about the coolest new thing to do online, and if they purchase my client's product or service along the way, that's good too.  But only if it's fun. Don't expect to sell toothpaste online because you now call it "extreme toothpaste!" That's not fun. That's a brand manager run amok. Even kids know to draw the line at "extreme brand management!" I invite all kinds of advertisements, however, even "extreme" ones, because the more marketing clutter there is, the easier it is to break through and stand out. Don't doubt that kids know how to tune out the "hella lame" advertisements and find the good stuff.

"Kids do not give a hoot as to whether or not they are playing with, wearing or even eating a brand. They are playing with a product they like, have maybe asked for and in most cases wanted because of the fun attached," says Nic Jones in an article on Kids' Brands.

Our company credo is "Death to Boredom. Long Live Fun!" and we believe in it. Luckily most of our clients know the value of the fun as well. For the 2005 release of Nintendogs, we created a marketing website to introduce kids to the fun of playing this newly released video game. The site contained information on how to purchase the game, of course. But before selling, it created fun. In every interaction, rollover and click of the mouse, fun was a key objective.

Other times our marketing message isn't as closely associated with the entertainment, but just sponsors it. For POST cereals, we created a game called "Morfits Quest" on the postopia.com kid's gaming website. In the game, there is no mention of breakfast cereal, just an entertaining and addictive care-and-feeding game, brought to you by POST.

Creative, fun brand experiences for kids don't have to be inherently bad for them. There are, in fact, many lessons to be learned from the best online marketing content about how to educate kids more effectively. Research shows that before kids can even read, they can learn interactively on a computer. While kids gain a lot from being read to by parents, they also crave learning where they are in control. Edutainment software that is well-structured and age-appropriate has been shown to improve the attention children paid to stories. And edutainment is now a $600 million/year industry. The results of a study by the Children's Digital Media Center titled "Control as Engagement" implies that putting kids in control of the content they view has the greatest effect in improving their engagement in the material, and improving their interest level and attention to computer-presented content.

So while the FCC has instituted new guidlines to help protect kids, most marketers knew those protective measures were outdated before they even took effect. But as long as we stick to creating entertaining marketing content that kids get to control, we don't have much to worry about (except those three year olds with TVs in their bedrooms).

*Jif and Skippy are used interchangeably for example only. The author believes they are both hella tasty.

Tiffany Young is Creative Director at Smashing Ideas Inc. She leads a team of 18 pixel-wrangling designers, animators and writers, and oversees development of all creative. Beginning her ad career in NYC twelve years ago, her client focus has been mostly entertainment, luxury and consumer goods. Raised on Fruit Loops and television, her roots in gaming go back to 1981 when she played Alien Invasion and Fortress of Zorlac on her Timex/Sinclair ZX81, loading programs via cassette tape. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin's creative advertising program, Tiffany is also an illustrator and an amateur shutterbug. When not managing her team, she teaches a leadership course at the School of Visual Concepts called "Managing Creative People." She has a pet duck. The duck can be reached at his blog: http://www.mrflapper.com.