Amid the understandable concerns around the health of people and the economy, the needs of children have tended to come further down the list – but this lockdown period will be a formative experience for this generation that brands will need to appreciate both now and in the future.
“There’s all sorts of assumptions out there – theories, speculation – about how the world and consumers have and will change,” Pete Maginn, insights director at Beano Studios, told the recent Digital Transformation Conference. “We believe that kids’ voices, in particular, have been under-represented.”
Back in late March 2020, the overwhelming feeling Beano’s tools were registering among children was boredom. The worry level rose initially as the coronavirus pandemic meant schools were shut and their world turned upside down and they saw what was on the news.
They’re actually “super-aware”, said Maginn, as the data and the analytics from Beano.com showed.
“In that first month of the coronavirus crisis, quizzes around geography went through the roof, as we knew that kids were hearing about what was going on in Italy, in Spain, in France, and then also in the US as well as the UK.”
But awareness hasn’t translated into concern. In early May only one in 20 chose to use the word “worried” to best describe how they were feeling; in contrast, one in five said they were bored.
“Their day-to day-experience isn’t of being in an intensive care unit or even understanding the numbers going on, but actually of massive boredom from being in lockdown with their family,” said Maginn.
The brand has responded accordingly, releasing a new Boredom Buster idea every day at 4pm (post-‘school’) on the website.
The idea of helping to “bust that boredom in the most amount of ways possible”, he added, has been a central plank of the brand’s business strategy.
For more details on how children in the UK and US have reacted to COVID-19, read WARC’s report: The kids are alright: The Beano’s insights on Gen Alpha in lockdown.
Sourced from WARC
