Tetra Pak, the world's leading company for food processing and packaging solutions, hosted “Marketing to Kids” seminar for marketing teams of its customers in the region. Aware of the fact that over a third of the population in the GCC and Yemen are children and that this represents a market opportunity of over 20 million consumers. There is a definite need to understand the phases of development for children, their nutritional, emotional and educational needs at each stage thus; Tetra Pak acknowledges the important of Marketing to Kids by discussing a number of related important topics during their one day seminar that took place in Jeddah and Dubai which includes. Although marketers have targeted children for decades, two recent trends have increased their interest in child consumers. First, both the discretionary income of children and their power to influence parent purchases have increased over time specifically that parents and specially mothers interact with kids at different phases of life. So how to understand those needs and apply them in the products and communications offered to kids is important, second, as the enormous increase in the number of available media has led to smaller audiences for each channel, digital interactive technologies have simultaneously opened new routes creating a growing space just for children and children's products. The seminar hosted an academic speaker, from the Consumer Knowledge Centre in UK, who provided a deep dive into this complex world of marketing, not only to children but to their parents as well. It explored the psychology and behavior that drives successful branding and communication programs, sighting examples of launches and campaigns from around the world. In addition, the participants were exposed to new products from Doheler targeting the kids' segment. Riccardo Castagnetti, Marketing Director of Tetra Pak Arabia, said “today, marketing and advertising permeate children's daily lives. In Tetra Pak Arabia's market, over 90 percent of our products are portion packs which are mainly consumed by kids, we see this as a responsibility to develop this segment with customers and provide a better proposition across the value chain.” — SG
