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Toyota Targets Kids, Hopes to Influence Parents

In April, Toyota began paying to place its Scion on Whyville.net, an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8- to 15-year-olds. Toyota hopes Whyvillians will do two things: influence their parents’ car purchases and grow up to buy a Toyota themselves.

Ten days into the campaign, The New York Times reports, visitors to the site had used the word “Scion” in online chats more than 78,000 times; hundreds of virtual Scions were purchased, using “clams,” the currency of Whyville; and the community meeting place “Club Scion” was visited 33,741 times.

Toyota is paying Whyville - not with virtual clams -  by the number of visitors on the site, but declined to name a figure. Whyville reaches an audience of 1.6 million.

In April, Toyota also launched its youth-oriented economy car Yaris with an integrated campaign that included 10-second “mobisodes” - video episodes on mobile devices - and interactive banner ad games.

Video games have become a daily activity in the lives of today’s children. A study released last year, which polled 4,000 boys and girls up to the age of 15, found that 61 percent play video games on a daily basis, and that 65 percent of those actually prefer to play their games on the PC rather than consoles and handhelds.

The power of younger consumers has grown stronger in recent years. According to research from Packaged Facts, 39 percent of parents of 10- and 11-year-olds say their children have a significant impact on brand purchases.