Please look at this picture - and imagine if you can being a parent (if you're not) and receiving this amongst the piles of mailed marketing waste that enters your home un-invited. Why do you think this one got my attention? What's wrong with this marketing story and this picture?
In case you can't see it clearly, it's two kids playing with toys in the backseat of a car. "Make Getting there half the fun" is the headline of this little story... What's the other half of the fun - seeing these two kids go flying past their safely restrained parents and through the windshield? The genius who put this little marketing story together forgot to strap these kids in! As a parent, I can tell you that there's a visceral reaction to seeing kids in a car without their seat belt buckled... And, in this case, it's so obvious (again, to a parent) since these kids are likely small enough to require (by law in some states, I think) to be in a childs car seat. And don't tell me the car in this picture is not moving... the door is closed and the sun is shining and it's clearly summer (the kids are in shorts) - so the alternative is that they are playing with toys in a parked, closed car in the summer sun... nah - let's stick with the seatbelt badness...
If you plan to sell toys to me, try to avoid that "we don't care about kids safety" angle... not effective.
2 comments:
I just started watching Mad Men which takes this parental angst to a new level. The show is long before seat belts were the law and light years before kid seats came into use.
In the first two episodes alone I've seen a kid playing with a plastic bag over her head and the kids jumping over the front car seat while the mother looses control.
Ahhh, makes me long for the days of sitting in the front seat of my parents VW Beetle while we drive to visit family.
ah, yes... 'tis true that this image would stir not an eyebrow in the days when I rode in the back seat. In fact it might just be criticized for not being true enough to reality without a smoking parent or two in the front seat or one of the kids hanging his sibling's toy out the window...
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