Kids or children?

Two years ago I got my then 10 year old son Max to help out on a campaign I was working on.

The product we were marketing was for teenage boys and our medium was the online kids world Habbo Hotel.

Max took one look at the brief and said we should turn it upside down.

When I asked him what he meant he explained that the minor prizes in the promo would be way more interesting to kids than the main prize.

I took his advice and the campaign went on to be the most successful ever run on Habbo Hotel in Australia.

Now EA Games has gone one better (in theory) and put a 12 year old in charge of their latest TV spot for the Nintendo Spore Hero game.

I say in theory because I just saw the ad and it looks like it was written by a couple of suits.

So I showed the ad to Max (who's now almost 13) and he said it looked like a little kids ad for a little kids game.

Guess some kids are just a bit more switched on than others.