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nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (
Bud-Weis-er
) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, ‘They’re great!’ ” 16
    According to Juliet Schor, author of
Born to Buy
, children who can recognize logos by age eighteen months not only grow up to prefer these brands but grow up to believe the brands correspond to their own personal qualities (or desired personal qualities), like being cutting-edge, strong, fast, or sophisticated. 17 What’s even more frightening is thateven three-year-olds already feel social pressure to use certain brands and already believe that wearing, owning, or consuming certain brands can help them make their way through life. In a 2009 study on the topic published in the journal
Psychology and Marketing
, when one preschooler was asked about LEGO, he said, “It’s really fun and I have to have it. If I have it, everyone wants to come to my house and play. If you don’t have it, they maybe don’t like you.” Said another, “McDonald’s has a playground so you can play there and everyone likes you.” 18
    Some food marketers in particular are using an especially pernicious strategy (and one we’ll be talking about a lot more in chapter 3 ) to target young and impressionable children: ads disguised as entertainment. As a
New York Times
cover story recently reported, many food companies, “often selling sugar cereals and junk food, are using multimedia games, online quizzes, and cell phone apps to build deep ties with young consumers.” More specifically, as a 2009 report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University found, three major food companies—General Mills, Kellogg’s and Post—were using games to “hawk cereals ranked among the least nutritious,” including Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, Trix, Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles. As the article reports, a game on the Lucky Charms Web site invites kids on virtual adventures with Lucky the Leprechaun; Apple Jacks offers an iPhone app called Race to the Bowl Rally, a racing-car game in which kids collect Apple Jack Cereal Pieces for extra race points; and the Honey Nut Cheerios site lets kids create their own comic strip featuring BuzzBee, the cereal’s iconic mascot. 19 In blurring the line between advertising and entertainment, these ads-as-games have several benefits for the companies in question. For one, they allow marketers to circumvent the regulations on advertising junk food on television. For another, they spread virally—as kids play or share these games with their friends, they unwittingly become guerrilla brand ambassadors. And third, as we’ll talk more about in chapter 3 , these games are inherently addictive in nature. In short, they employ not just one but several powerful yet hidden persuaders.
    As we’ll see throughout this book, food marketers are not alone in these tactics. Companies of all stripes know full well that advertisements also begin to shape children’s lasting preferences at an alarminglyyoung age and that the younger we are when we begin using a product, the more likely we are to keep using it for the rest of our lives. Which is why makers of so many distinctly adult products are targeting their ads and marketing to inappropriately young customers. Let’s look at how.
Unleashing the Sex Kitten Inside
    S tudies show that today, both boys and girls are reaching puberty on average a full year earlier than they did decades ago, a phenomenon known in marketing circles as “precocious puberty.” So what? Well, puberty means products—razors, shaving cream, face wash, acne gel, deodorant, makeup, and more. And you better believe companies are taking advantage of that fact. Seattle-based manufacturer Dot Girl, for example, sells a “first period kit,” a pink or robin’s-egg-blue pack decorated with cartoon characters and youthful logos. Inside, your