It was with dismay that I read the UK newspapers a week or so ago with headlines announcing that a marketing agency called Dubit had been using kids to help promote their clients’ products through the use of social media – essentially children are being paid to tell other children how cool certain products are.

For me this is about as low as we can go and I have left it a while to blog about it because I wanted to let the initial anger subside. I still can’t condone such action and despite Dubit’s protestations there can be no excuse for the behaviour and that of their clients. One claim was that all kids have to be open and honest as to the fact that they are being paid to be a brand promoter, another was that no children below the age of 16 were used by Coca-Cola when they used Dubit.

Now, unless they have recently changed the laws of the UK, children don’t officially stop being children until they reach the age of 18 and so the age argument is hollow, but I can let this go as I’m being a little churlish, and we should all be happy to allow 16 and 17 year olds to be savvy enough to know what is going on and that they can make rational decisions.

My problem comes from who they pass the information to. It is plain daft of us to think that 16 year olds will only “age-up” in their communications. Dubit will have asked their participants to contact everyone they know to pass on the message (which they get training for, to make sure it’s just part of the conversation!), and we can be certain that many 15 and 14 year olds will have received the messaging; and what will they do with it? Pass it down to their younger friends of course, and so the chain goes on.

It’s clever marketing and when I first heard of Dubit and how they used students in this manner I applauded the cleverness of their thinking. In fact I still do applaud them because they are making an art out of “word of mouth” and are producing great results for their clients. They also do some fantastic work beyond this type of “product placement” and are clearly very clever and talented marketers!

However they have to now draw the line; don’t let this get into the younger audiences. Don’t pay kids to pass on messages and tell their client’s not to do it as well. It’s not ethical, we all know it and no amount of rationalisation and protestation will make it right.

As with all issues of this nature it’s about honesty and integrity. I acknowledge that everyone has businesses to run and that clients come to agencies for help in getting stand-out from the clutter. But we don’t need to do this, there’s so many other ways that won’t antagonise the consumer.

I feel the more often we tell clients not to do this sort of thing, then they will stop briefing us to do it. We have a duty to prevent it escalating; the excuse “well someone will do it” is not good enough. This smacks of exploitation and we have a duty to children not to bring them up thinking that they should get paid to convey positive messages or that they grow up expecting a reward for saying positive things or, God forbid, that they only do things if they get paid.

Some will say we’re already going this way, let’s not fan the flames! 

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