A Review of Martin Lindstrom’s “BRANDChild”
By Linda Davis
 Kogan
Page Limited
2003
Today’s "tweens," children who are pre-adolescent
to 14 years of age, are different from any generation before
them. According to Martin Lindstrom’s “BRANDChild,”
if you want to market successfully to this age group, you
need to build your marketing campaigns around the data he
presents in this book.
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 What
is it about the current generation of tweens that sets them
apart? In Lindstrom’s words, "they’ve grown
up faster, are more connected, more direct and more informed.…
[They] have more personal power, more money, influence and attention"
than the generations that preceded them.
Tweens are electronically connected to brands, as well as
to each other. These "cyberchildren," with their
worldwide connections, communicate their brand preferences
on a global scale. They have more disposable income than any
generation before, and urban tweens influence over 50 percent
of all purchases. This influence extends beyond the products
that they buy for themselves to brands that their parents
buy.
Changing family demographics have caused this group to form
their brand preferences outside of the home. Peer pressure
is nothing new, but today, the peer group often takes on the
role once occupied by the family. If the leader of a tween
group favors a brand, the rest of that group is likely to
align with the leader’s choices when making their own
purchases. Lindstrom recommends marketing to this select group
of leaders to drive the success of a product. This is one
example of the many strategies he proposes throughout the
book.
The strong emphasis on marketing to children throughout the
book borders on the unethical at times. Does the author advocate
taking advantage of purchasing power of these children by
suggesting the use of irresistible marketing techniques? Anyone
who is protective about the kinds of products and ads children
are exposed to might object to these strategies. Lindstrom
is concerned about ethical considerations himself and ends
the book by outlining a code of ethics for marketers, who,
he says, need to earn the trust of both parents and tweens.
Had Lindstrom placed this ethical code at the beginning instead
of the end of “BRANDChild,” he may have helped
to reassure readers of his intent.
 Whether
you market products to the tween age group or not, you will
probably enjoy reading “BRANDChild,” especially
if you are interested in demographics, child development or
future trends. It is packed with statistics and examples of
what it’s like to be a tween in an urban setting in
the 21st century.
If you are marketing to tweens, this book is a must-have.
It is full of timely data and branding dos and don’ts.
At the end of each chapter, Lindstrom takes you through "action
points." These questions and exercises are designed to
help you build your own marketing campaigns. “BRANDChild”
also has a twin on the web. This DualBook concept provides
purchasers of the book access to a companion web site at www.dualbook.com,
where you can find the contents of the book as well as more
recent articles by Lindstrom.
Linda Davis is a technical communicator with Computer
Sciences Corp. She provides internal communication consulting
and implementation for the IT services staff at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Linda is a recent graduate
of the master's program in communication management at the
University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.
Her book reviews also appear in the Society for Technical
Communication's journal, Technical Communication.
Linda can be reached at Linda.M.Davis@jpl.nasa.gov.
She is a member of the Los Angeles IABC chapter.
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