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mothers who’d sucked on Kopiko candies while pregnant, many told me that when they’d given their fussy, screaming newborns a small dose of Kopiko
coffee
, it had instantly, and magically, calmed thesebabies down (a parenting strategy I can’t say I recommend). Today, a mere four years into its existence, Kopiko coffee is the third-largest brand in the Philippines.
Baby’s First Brands
    A s a kid growing up in Denmark, by the time I was five I was already preoccupied with a handful of brands. LEGO. Bang & Olufsen (the supermodern Danish designer of everything from sound systems to telephones). James Bond, the pop group Abba (I hereby apologize). And the fact is, thirty-five years later, the brands I loved as a child
still
influence my tastes and buying choices. For one thing, I always (unconsciously) dress like James Bond (all in black) and wear a Rolex watch. When I’m on the road, which is approximately ten months out of the year, I almost always stay in hotels that recall the ultramodern Bang & Olufsen style. And while my clothes may be all black, I’ve always beendrawn to colorful art. I could never quite figure out why, until a few years ago, when it struck me that every single painting in my house was made up of yellow, red, blue, black, and white—exactly those five basic LEGO colors I was so obsessed with as a kid.
    All right, I confess it, I still listen to Abba every now and again. In my defense, I am Scandinavian.
    I’m living proof that not only are very young children aware of brands, but we cling to the brands we liked as children well into our adult lives. But to find out just how common this phenomenon is, I enlisted SIS International Research, a New York–based global custom market research and strategic business research company, which has served over 70 percent of the Fortune 500 and many of the world’s most influential organizations in the course of conducting research projects in over 120 countries, to conduct a study looking at how our childhood preferences shape our buying habits as adults. In surveying 2,035 children and adults, SIS found that 53 percent of adults and 56 percent of teens used brands they remembered from their childhoods, especially foods, beverages, and health-care and consumer/household goods—if you think companies and their marketers don’t know this and aren’t actively marketing to young children left and right, think again. As you’ll see at various points throughout this book, marketers and advertisers have many clever tricks up their sleeves to brandwash those young (and impressionable) consumers—in an attempt to secure their loyalty for life.
    This may help explain why children under the age of three years represent an approximately $20 billion market to advertisers. Yup, these are the very same children who watch roughly forty thousand television ads a year and who, as I’ve found in my studies over the years, know the names of more branded characters than of actual animals. What most parents probably don’t notice, however, is the extent to which babies as young as eighteen months are picking up subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues in their environment about brands and products.
    What’s the first word recognized by most kids all over the world? No, it’s not “Mom” or “Dad.” It’s “McDonald’s” (or “Ronald”), according to Bryan Urbick, CEO of the Consumer Knowledge Centre in Middlesex, UK. True, most eighteen-month-old babies can’t physically articulate the word “McDonald’s,” but what they
can
do is recognizethe fast-food chain’s red and yellow colors, roofline, golden arches, and logo. Then they can jab their chunky little fingers at aMcDonald’s from the backseat of a minivan, at which point Dad pulls into the parking lot and everyone eats and feels stuffed and happy. Thus, that baby’s recognition of McDonald’s becomes layered with emotional reward, familiarity, and, of course, taste, sound, and smell.
    It gets worse. As