Children's Day The kid in the driver's seat 2011

Many years ago, legendary marketing guru Philip Kotler, in his seminal work Marketing Management listed the four essential Ps of marketing: "product", "price", "place" and "promotion" . Over the years, marketers - especially those dealing with children - added another P to the list: "Pester power", the ability of children to influence parents into buying decisions.

More and more product managers and advertisers are now realising that the scope of kids in buying decisions is far more. From pester power they have now evolved into informed and intelligent conduits of decision making. Marketers with a penchant for labelling have come up with yet another P: "Participatory", where the child is an important partner in the buying decision process. Brand consultant Harish Bijoor says it's quite remarkable that kids today, even as small as 9-10 years old, are becoming key decision-support systems for family buys. "Tell them the product and they can come up with brands, options, prices and the best deals to boot."

What is quite interesting is that apart from sectors that are directly related to them - like games, toys, apparel etc - children are also influencing categories that do not relate to them directly. Like which car to buy, their dad's mobile or even the cosmetics their mother uses. Gayatri Puri, a Delhi-based advocate says that very few buying decisions in her family are taken without the active involvement of her two sons Aehsas, 14, and Aakarsh, 9. "Often, they give us suggestions and bits of information about household products that leave us amazed," she says. (See 'Brands are important . So is performance' )

But then, should such awareness be surprising ? Brand pundits have, for some time now, been speaking about the KGOY generation - Kids Getting Older Younger. With early maturing and awareness comes opinion, which is encouraged and heard by parents. "The urban nuclear family relies on each other to accomplish tasks at home", says Sheetal Jayaraj of Bangalore-based marketing consultancy, Insight Instore. "Children today seamlessly merge the physical and digital. They learn early on how to heat their food when their parents are late from work, how to get the washing machine going and so on... this participation has an impact on the decision making process."

The impact is being acknowledged by product managers who are viewing families as "minidemocracies" where kids have an active say. Industry recognition of this trend is seen most visibly in advertising. "A number of automobile advertisements now include children," points out Richard Rekhy of consultancy firm, KPMG India. Many automobile companies are recognizing that buying decisions would be faster if kids are involved and are positioning their ads - some would say, quite cannily - on the desirability factor to influence the young. "With a car being a marker for style and status, children are not immune to the peer pressure of having to own the 'biggest and the best'", says Jayaraj.

The critical point, then, as more brand managers are realizing, is how to reach out to kids most effectively. "There are multiple brand communication strategies for children now," says Jayaraj. "These include prime time slots on kids channels, in-film promotions where the hero uses a particular brand of phone or drives a desired car. At the retail level, graphics play a huge role in adding desirability to the brand, in particular licensing agreements from the world of kids - like Cadbury and Ben 10 or Foodles and KungFu Panda."

The flip side, however, is that in the process, children may be getting drawn into consumerist tendencies that might go on to define their personality . "When I see young children making friends with only those who are familiar with top-notch brand names, I find it quite disturbing," says Rashmi Batra, a teacher at a leading public school in Delhi.