Pi-Consulting

We should remind ourselves that a significant number of high-spending consumers (though it’s not actually their money) are a lot younger than us. Mere children, in fact.

The Consumer Insight column looks at the headline above, and winces. Today, Maurice Chevalier’s lyric from the 1951 musical Gigi! resonates with a decidedly queasy tone. Back then no-one much imagined a culture that could produce pouting Bratz dolls and catwalk-ready six-year-olds.

Nonetheless, at least one company that caters to juvenile consumer appetites has reason to “thank Heaven for little girls”. Then again, maybe their thanks should go to Andy Mooney, for his intuitive understanding of what makes girl-children squeal with delight and tug their mothers’ sleeves.

Mr. Mooney was the former Nike manager who was brought in seven years ago to rescue Disney Consumer Products, where sales were slipping by 30% a year. He arrived with a magic wand in his pocket. A month into his new job, he went to a “Disney On Ice” show, and noticed long entrance lines of small girls, all dressed up in thrown-together ‘princess’ costumes. Mooney thought this looked like latent demand, and briefed his production and marketing team with a swatch of colours and a sheaf of draft license agreements. “We’re going to help these little girls to do what they’re doing anyway”, said the sport-shoe seer. “To project themselves into characters from our classic movies”. (more…)