Today's kids are smarter, more aware and more demanding, and this is making the marketer's job all the more difficult.
However, today's kids are also better off and have a greater influence on family buying patterns, thus providing advertisers with a lucrative but highly fickle route to the domestic dollar.
In his new book Brand Child, Martin Lindstrom discusses an increasingly powerful and smart consumer group that not only spent US$300 billion last year, but also influenced the spending of $1.88 trillion across the globe.
Lindstrom refers to this market as 'tweens', a group of highly interactive and brand aware eight to 14 year-olds.
And in today's connected world, tweens in Asia behave in very much the same way as their counterparts in the West.
Research by MindShare Asia-Pacific revealed that 53.6 per cent of Asia's tweens receive a regular allowance, 81 per cent receive monetary gifts from relations, and 66 per cent are influenced to buy by TV advertising, while advertising on the internet influences 15.5 per cent.
In a separate survey, Universal McCann found that children in Thailand, China and Taiwan are having an ever-greater influence on what they watch on TV. In Taiwan, for example, only two per cent of households ever stop their children having a say on what is watched on TV.
All this adds up to an affluent, influential, expanding consumer group.
According to McCann's Natalie Morley, regional insights manager, Asia-Pacific, tweens' control of the remote in this part of the world is linked in part to the trend towards smaller families. This produces a child who is the centre of attention and therefore has more explicit and implicit control over the family.
"Parents and grandparents could well be more willing to pay and buy for quality products for their children," she said.
"In China, particularly, we see the child as the badge of family success. The parents go without so that the child has the 'right' clothes, toys, education etc. Advertising to kids is not only about targeting kids ... but also the adults in their family circles."
Many industry experts believe that it is the tweens themselves who are deciding how and where they spend their own money. However, advertising directly to kids has its own pitfalls.
"The most critical thing is that advertisers have to speak to (tweens) in their space, in their language," explains Annette Nazaroff, consumer insights director Asia-Pacific, MindShare.
"They can't just take an ad for just anything and plonk it in a kids' show or shove it on a billboard."
Getting the language right is critical. As much as kids show loyalty to one brand on one day, they are also easily turned to a competitor's brand through peer pressure, the celebrity cult and changing trends. Getting the message right means retaining brand loyalty.
Richard Cunningham, Asia managing director for Nickelodeon, says today's kids are more savvy consumers and are forming brand loyalty at a younger age.
"Kids are for things that are fun and speak to them as people, as individuals, as decision makers," he says.
"They don't want to be spoken to as 'little kids'. They don't want to be spoken down to in any way."
Today's tweens have grown up faster and are more connected and more informed than their parents. They have a steady diet of information 24/7 through a variety of channels. Sports stars, pop stars and music influence tweens across the globe with many opinions, attitudes and interests formed outside the home.
As Cunningham points out, with kids in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia seeing between 20,000 and 40,000 commercials a year, no wonder they have a more cynical view of the world.
Two key features of today's tweens are that they require interactivity and instant response.
Soumitra Saha, vice-president for regional advertising and licencing sales, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia-Pacific, says this requires marketers to constantly monitor the marketplace and tune their communications to keep up with the interaction.
"While marketers need to conduct short-term tactical campaigns to align their connection with kids, it is important that the brand message or the marketing concept should have the potential to evolve over time," he says.
Of course, advertisers are well aware that today's kids are tomorrow's adult consumers and tapping into the tween psyche at an early age could build brand loyalty for later years. And with kids having an increasing influence on household spend, getting your message right could kill two birds with one stone.
Nickelodeon's Cunningham says big-ticket item advertisers such as automobile manufacturers are already sponsoring some of his channel's kid's events.
He said many adults would also turn to their children for advice when purchasing items such as computers.
"Getting the brand across and getting the brand name established and recognised with kids is crucial," he says.
"When dad is dragging the family around to the different car shops, a little voice in the back says 'Hey dad, let's go to the Subaru showroom'."
CHILD OF OUR TIME: THE TWEEN
Kids these days are so brand-savvy that parents are actively seeking kiddy counsel when it comes to major household purchases. Unique research by Millward Brown for the Martin Lindstrom epic Brand Child reveals just how much.
Children in India are in a particularly strong position, and 46 per cent of tweens there say their parents come to them for advice on how to make a smart, well-informed car purchase.
Likewise, 25 per cent of India's tweens exercise pester power, telling mum and dad what car they think they should be buying.
While they are less influential than their global counterparts, China's tweens are making a mark on purse-power. Specific to car-buying, 30 per cent of Chinese parents ask their kids for advice.
Brand-smart as they are, 29 per cent of China's tweens also meter out purchasing advice to parents on which car they should be driving.
The trend-hot eye of a tween doesn't miss a trick on fashion, either.
So, while 23 per cent of mums and dads in China ask their kids for advice on fashionable togs, 22 per cent of kids are also telling their parents what to wear.
Not all tweens, however, define themselves in the same way. While 91 per cent of Chinese kids fly the green flag and think products harmful to the environment should be banned, only 38 per cent think clothes describe who they are, and only 34 per cent are looking forward to when they're grown up.
India's tweens are a more optimistic bunch - 90 per cent aspire to be famous and 92 per cent enjoy inventing and creating new things, compared with only 57 per cent of Chinese kids. To 80 per cent of India's headstrong tweens, growing up is the fun part to look forward to.
- Olivia Toth.