Kids genre today - Little voices, Big impact. Marketers take note

The kids of today are no longer mute spectators to the developments around them; they are in fact, increasingly turning into influencers, having a major say in their families’ purchase decisions. They are born into the digital age, are tech savvy from a very young age, are opinionated and aware of various current issues. Market researchers are even beginning to call them ‘Generation Alpha’.

The 4^th edition of SCREENXX Summit & Awards 2022 commenced with an opening keynote address by Sonali Bhattacharya, Head of Marketing – Kids TV Network, Viacom18, on “Kids genre today - Little voices, Big impact”. Speaking on Day 1 of the event, Bhattacharya, noted, “The audience that we target to and speak to are growing – two to fourteen year olds, are growing more and more in the way they pass on their opinions, the way they state their preferences. They are actually the little influencers in every household. All big brands sitting here end up catering to this audience; that pie is just growing year on year.”

“Now that Covid is behind us and we would all like to forget the pandemic, and what it has done to the entire world, we cannot forget what it did to the kids’ consumption of content. I think it was a great eye opener and we realised that this group of people who we market to, were consuming content across platforms. We realised overnight that it is actually platform agnostic. Whether its broadcast, OTT, Gaming, Web, Online – the kids were consuming content everywhere. And they were the first ones to adopt and first ones to actually pivot to the new reality, and be very comfortable in that new reality, when it came to viewing content of their choice. And I’m setting this context because that is where the big brands bring up from. It is only through these preferences that we follow and track.”

She also acknowledged the fact that it has become more challenging than before to actually reach out to this target group. “As marketers and brand custodians, we had to actually change our way of marketing to them overnight. The traditional means of reaching out to kids that existed five years ago, no longer even hold relevance beyond a point. They are early adopters, they do end up preferring to consume the content of their choice largely on television, because India is still largely a TV household economy, but we can see how dramatically OTT and online is growing in parallel, in tandem and a lot of the efforts that we have to put in, have been channelised in that direction. And we continue to grow our reach on all of these platforms.”

For the complete keynote address, watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBLcESjOVv0