Ronny Schiff - 06/15/2007
If you've ever walked into a store aimed at the younger set, that golden demographic of children and tweens that have disposable cash reserves not yet earmarked for cars, mortgages, or the other trappings of adulthood, two things probably crossed your mind:
- Some of this stuff is undeniably cool (certainly a lot more fun than anything we ever had growing up); and
- What are the ages of the kids to which this is being marketed?
There's a good chance we have the first response because a lot of these items—from the belly shirts we see on middle-school girls to the video-filled, Internet accessible phones in the baggy jeans of their male counterparts—were originally marketed to people a little closer to adulthood, adult needs, and adult incomes. But children are growing up faster (in some ways) than they ever did in past generations. There's even a handy acronym for it: KGOY, for Kids Getting Older Younger. And it doesn't just refer to tweens—the two-year olds playing with Barbie are also evidence of KGOY.
If you own a store aimed at younger clientele (as you might based on your interest in an article with the first title), some of this is great news—the younger children who are increasingly more responsible for their parent's purchase decisions (and have more money to make their own) are your allies. However, if you've ever tried programming music for your store, you may have run into the problem that forms the basis of the second title: as kids grow older younger with respect to their musical tastes, finding a song—let alone a whole CD or radio station—that fits their age-inflated sensibility, that doesn't also send their parents running for soap to rinse out their child's ears, can be a problem. You want a happy medium for both.
The Holy Grail Of Music For Retail
In a nutshell, this describes fun, engaging songs that not only entertain your target audience but also create a memorable, happy, pleasant and often exciting shopping experience that highlights your brand. It sounds simple enough. But children's taste in music is leaning toward pop artists at younger and younger ages, fueled by older siblings and our celebrity-centric media and the frequency with which children have media contact, whether through TV, the Internet, radio, or print. And since many pop artists—even those not much older than their younger fans themselves—are writing about themes for adults, there is often a conflict between the music, mores, and parents. How do you win with children, tweens and their parents?
DMI Music & Media Networks, a company with a decade of experience turning top brands into custom-crafted radio stations, has created a specialty around this very area. For all the aforementioned reasons, we realize that the most sensitive programming we offer is that aimed at younger children. We want you, the retailer, to be able to engage your target audience with a great music experience. But with many of us parents ourselves, we also recognize a need to keep children from being exposed to language or topics that aren't age-appropriate.
The CD (Player) Never Sleeps
To meet both these goals, we listen to every—and we do mean every —song in every genre so we know exactly what the song is about (yes, this means we have listened to some really odd stuff). We cover the gamut of recordings , choosing music from children's recording artists, character soundtracks, Early Childhood artists, special albums recorded by pop artists, and cover-recordings of pop material when appropriate. We then rate them for age appropriateness, both based on content and artist appeal. If the artist has had bad press over a sensitive issue or has lost appeal with your target audience, they are removed from consideration. We then look for songs with the following:
- No mention of teenage angst over philandering boyfriends, mean girlfriends, sexual desires, bad schools, bad parents, or inappropriate situations in school
- No sexual inferences or fooling around at all
- No dirty words (even “hell” or “damn”) or double entendres
- No mention of alcohol, drugs, or cigarette smoking
- No violence
About 85% of the songs we listen to will be dismissed for the reasons cited above. But the result is well worth the wait: a stockpile of songs to choose from that will fit your brand's sensibility, a parent's sensitivity, and a child's selectivity.
And That's Just The Start
Our goal is to create the right mix of music that will:
- Set a mood
- Highlight you brand
- Enhance your customers' shopping experience
Your employees will appreciate the word mix, because they won't hear the same 150 songs over and over and over in the same mind-numbing sequence until they have them memorized. We insert specialized coding in our programming software that determines what songs can or cannot play back to back and varies the mix from day to day. And most of our custom-made, custom-branded stations contain 500-600 songs, or about six 8-hour shifts worth, to keep everyone guessing what will be next.
DMI Music & Media Networks will also daypart your music mix, a process that uses your store's demographics and traffic patterns to design a custom algorithm of the most appropriate tracks to play when parents are most likely to be in the store alone (school hours), with their children (after school), or when children may be there with their friends and peers (weekends).
We also take into account the age orientation of the store to determine the tempo of the music to play and its prominence in the foreground of the shopping experience. As children's heart rates are higher than adult's, the tempo of the music should be medium to very fast, with few slower tempos. Hence, stores catering to older children and tweens will tend to have music with a faster beat that is part of the shopping experience in contrast to stores targeted to very young children or babies, where it is really the parent who is being wooed with the music more than the child. For stores catering to elementary-school-aged children, a mix of fast- and moderate-tempo music put in the background of the retail experience is often best.
What About You?
The above may sound complicated, but DMI Music & Media Networks has been around long enough to know how to create a perfect playlist quickly. The toughest part of our job is really nailing your brand concept through music. It's not hard for us to create the sound once we get the brand. That's why in order for us to more easily understand your brand and give you what you want, we'll need you to give us:
- A clear, cohesive brand statement
- Detailed information about the layout and décor of the store
- Demographic information
- Geographic locations
We will often take this a step further and conduct our own focus groups and research with children and parents. We take very seriously our commitment to creating the sound of your brand, and your input is indispensable to our ability to do so. We pride ourselves on our unique and boutique services that are focused on aiding your business' success.
The result is a private, custom-made in-store radio station that—we can't resist—will be music to everyone's ears.
Ronny Schiff is a well-respected musicologist, author, publisher, and audio music programmer. Over 2,000 music books or books about music (including Early Childhood music) bear her name as editor, co-writer, agent, publisher or author. Schiff is a member of NARAS (GRAMMY® ) and NAMM® (National Association of Music Merchants), and has taught Music Business at the university level.