A perceção das marcas, pais, meios, agências e juristas sobre a atividade dos Kidfluencers como agentes de publicidade

Abstract

Digital platforms have been gaining more and more expression and leveraging communication through this media. More and more, brands recognize social media as a strategic resource to advertise their products and build solid relationships with their audience. The increasing visibility of influencers emerged as a communication vehicle for brands, to whom they recognize a great capacity of opinion leadership, thus being able to shape and develop purchase behaviors based on their recommendations. Likewise, children have gained relevance in the digital influencer marketing market, especially influencing their peers. Being a relatively recent phenomenon, it is important to understand the prespective of the main stakeholders involved in this process. It is equally important to understand the perspectives of the main stakeholders involved in the process. Thus, the perceptions of brands, parents, media, agencies and, as this is a sensitive topic involving children, legal experts who work or have worked with minors were consulted. For that, a qualitative approach was done, including an interview survey strategy, with 14 semi-structured interviews: one with a manager of children's toys brands; five to parents from different households with no relationship with each other; two responsible for the Advertising Direction of two different media partners; four to agency professionals; and to two to jurists. The investigation made it possible to understand the perception of brands, parents, different players in the market and it was possible to complement it with the perspective of two jurists. Results show that ethical concerns are very evident and guide the concern of both jurists, agencies and media when it comes to communication with kidfluencers. On the other hand, a small dimension of the phenomenon in Portugal is identified, which leads to young adult influencers being used in communications for children. Even though it is admitted that this is a growing market, along with influencer marketing, there are still some reservations regarding it. It continues to be an underexplored phenomenon, mainly due to its small dimension and ethical concerns it raises.

Date of Award	26 Feb 2024
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Patrícia Tavares (Supervisor)