Children’s brands have the potential to shape children’s lifelong interests, thoughts, goals, desires, habits, and health…

Driving destructive trends and bombarding children with advertisements for unhealthy products impacts their lifelong wellness and society as a whole by impacting the lifestyles, capabilities, and objectives of our future decision-makers. Children’s brands should be held to the highest standards of conscience, responsibility, and excellence.

The Obesity Society’s 2009 study on children’s eating habits has proven that breakfast cereal doesn’t have to be neon colored and sugary for children to enjoy their breakfast experience (1). In fact, when served low sugar cereals, children eat healthier serving sizes, drink more juice, and eat more fruit with their meal (2). So, what if, instead of selling kids junk cereal, we sold them cereal that helped develop healthy lifelong eating habits?

What if we applied everything we know about branding, to making kids want things that are actually good for them? What if the point was not to build everything and anything that we could get children to buy, but to actually build something that combined the shared wants and needs of children and their parents? What if?