Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Spongebob SquarePant's Massive $8 Billion Franchise

Hard to believe that Spongebob’s already ten years old. Ad Age takes a look at the aquatic wonder’s amazing rise to stardom over the years.

Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, summed up the ascent of SpongeBob even more succinctly: “For kids, I would put SpongeBob in that rarefied category that includes the Sesame Street universe and the Disney universe,” he said. “If you add up the total number of episodes in only 10 years, that’s a relatively small body of work, and SpongeBob has managed to infiltrate the culture of childhood and American life at large that few other things have done.”

Jul 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Kids Talk to Kaleidoscope about Brands and Advertising

Kids ages eight to 17 talk with Kaleidoscope (Nickoldeon’s brand and consumer insights department) about how they view brands and advertising. The short version: brands are important, and serve as a reflection to your friends and peers of your personality and social identity.

According to kids and teens, there are several attributes that make a brand important, with quality and “the way it looks” rated as the most important. Having an experience with a brand is typically a prerequisite, especially with boys. If kids or teens have a less-than-great experience with a brand, they tend to reject it and are reluctant to give it a second chance. From a social perspective, brands are a direct reflection of personality, therefore brand acceptance relies heavily on peer approval. This makes brand choices especially significant to tween and teen girls. As one girl in grade seven said, “You get more respect if your clothes are more expensive. I get lots of compliments on my Hollister jeans because everybody wants them.”

Here’s the PDF information sheet and video of interviews from the first of Kaleidoscope’s two-part series.

Jun 28, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #