CMC 2017 - Research 3 - The Anatomy of Children’s Fandom

Brands want fans, but few look at why they have fans and where the value lies.  We explore what child fans bring to brands and how to nurture them?

Presented by Maurice Wheeler, Kids Industries

Ask the people around you what they want to achieve for their brand, IP or idea, and the likelihood is they’ll say they want to gain more fans. There seems to exist an underlying perception that ‘fans’ are more commercially valuable than just viewers, readers, players or even buyers, but no real understanding of what a fan really is, how a fan is made and what is the value of having more fans. To help answer these questions, this session explores fandom within the world of children.

Based on insights from 30 families with children aged 5–11, we identified the key features of brands that inspire fandom, as well as some of the surrounding mechanics: how do children choose what to ‘fan’ and what kind of brands inspire this? Can fandom be lasting or do children tend to be fickle? Given children don’t control money in the way adults do, what is the value of their fandom? And finally – can fandom be created, built from the ground up, and how?