Marketing to Kids Is an Obstacle Course

If you're advertising in the $1 billion kids marketplace, you’ll need to accommodate a bit more in the way of oversight, both from traditional antagonists like watchdog groups and from a less predictable challenger: big-box retailers.

Media buyers say big-box stores are putting serious pressure on toy manufacturers to sell toys alongside pencils and notebooks during the back-to-school period, and they're leveraging coveted shelf space in the Hard Eight to do it. The kids market is seeing sellout rates increase dramatically, tightening inventory and forcing clients to look for ad inventory in periods that fall beyond the run-up to the holiday season. "If you want that endcap or that prominent shelf position, you have to prove that you're going to support the product and push it to consumers," explained one kids market buyer (who asked not to be named). "The toy company then needs to put a media plan together and say, 'We’re going to spend this much money, and here’s how we’re going to do it.’ To earn your holiday shelf space, if you will, you have to start pre-promoting your product."