A Child's-Eye View
Expanding Your Audience to the Younger Set
By Kellye Whitney
C |
All of these things share a common thread—none of them require a child to leave his or her house or interact face-to-face with another person. All activities can be done alone or interactively in "cyber" groups, and while there are tons of messages floating in the media to encourage healthy snacking and pointing out how to read the labels of this product or that one to make healthy choices, none of these activities has been proven to work well as a method of exercise or nutritional instruction.
So, how can more traditional parks, sports facilities and health clubs compete with that techie mentality and get kids onto ballfields and into rec centers to participate in team sports and other activities?
The short answer is to learn how to market to your audience. The modern child's brain moves quickly. They've grown used to processing many multimedia messages at one time, and as a result their attention span has shortened accordingly. Marketing efforts must adopt a whole new approach to appeal to younger generations, and sports, fitness and recreation directors have to evolve their marketing techniques in order to compete.