Should toy companies avoid stereotyping in their marketing communications campaigns?

Marketing communications campaigns are an essential tool to drive a toy company’s success, and gender stereotyping these may lead to certain unwanted behaviours and outcomes. Gender stereotypes are views and preconceptions that men and women have and should have different roles, attributes, behaviours and functions within our society (Skocajic et al. 2019). In today’s modern world it is necessary for toy companies to adapt their marketing strategies to the ever-evolving needs and wants and to the rise in popularity of gender equality (The NPD Group 2015). It is therefore essential to understand why toy companies gender stereotype their campaigns, but also to determine why it is crucial for these behaviours to come to an end.

Boys have always been more interested in “traditionally masculine toys” and girls in “traditionally feminine toys” (Weisgram 2019). A meta-analysis came to the conclusion that boys naturally used male-typed toys more than girls, and vice versa (Todd et al. 2017). Similarly to this, children also have colour preferences and are associated and attracted to different colours (Auster and Mansbach 2012), implying that if toy companies were to make their campaigns gender-neutral, children would not be attracted to these, decreasing the amount of consumers and sales.

The social construct of gender preferences has led to toy companies gender stereotyping their marketing communications campaigns and gender categorising their toys as “girl toys” and “boy toys”, even though both girls and boys can and do share interests and likes. Associating different activities to boys and girls from a young age (Fine and Rush 2016) will introduce them to gender differences and will inevitably strengthen the construction of gender stereotypes (Weisgram 2019). Having such views about gender has a negative impact on the economy, both in terms of skills development and inequality within the workplace. Skills development is a crucial part of growing up and preparing oneself for a future career, and thus gender stereotyping campaigns and toys will lead to children missing out “on developing skills that come from play with activities associated with the other gender” (Coyle and Liben 2020, p.44). Therefore, if women wished to go into a career categorised as a man’s career, they would lack certain knowledge and skills that could have allowed them to succeed, damaging the workplace and the overall economy. In addition, exposing children to gender stereotyped campaigns and toys automatically leads to gender inequality within the workplace, also impacting the economy. Children are brought up believing that certain careers are more appropriate for them depending on their gender (Cherney and Dempsey 2010) which “contributes to the gender segregation of the occupational structure with women statistically dominating in fields such as nursing and men statistically dominating in fields such as engineering” (Auster and Mansbach 2012, p.385). This is essentially predicting the field in which girls and boys might go into and won’t go into, and is stopping children from expressing their likes, interests and hobbies. These restrictions lead to companies and brands losing valuable team members, only because of gender. One company, Morrisons, has taken into account the damaging effects of gender stereotyping their campaigns and toys, switching their toy marketing from gender to price based. M&S, Tesco, Next and Toys ‘R’ Us have also adapted their marketing strategies (Russell 2014).

Gender neutralising campaigns and toys would make the market expand to all children instead of being either only for girls or only for boys (Fine and Rush 2016). It could also be used as a marketing strategy, as it would have the potential to create a live buzz effect (Kimmel 2015).

Gender stereotyping marketing communications campaigns has been widely used as a marketing strategy by toy companies, as a result of the belief that boys and girls cannot share likes and interests. Although, due to the rise in popularity and high demand of gender equality toy companies have had to adapt their strategies, leading to an overall positive impact on the economy, decreasing the inequalities within the workplace, giving the freedom to children of expressing their likes and hobbies and developing skills in a wide range of subjects, as well as increasing sales and revenue. On the other hand, toy campaigns are only a small part of the advertising market, and other domains such as beauty or household product campaigns still need to acknowledge the damage of gender stereotypes.

Reference List:

Auster, C. J. and Mansbach, C. S., 2012. The Gender Marketing of Toys: An Analysis of Color and Type of Toy on the Disney Store Website. Sex Roles [online], 67 (7-8), 375-388.

Cherney, I. D. and Dempsey, J., 2010. Young children’s classification, stereotyping and play behaviour for gender neutral and ambiguous toys. Educational Psychology [online], 30 (6), 651-669.

Coyle, E. F. and Liben, L. S., 2020. Gendered Packaging of a STEM Toy Influences Children’s Play, Mechanical Learning, and Mothers’ play Guidance. Child development [online], 91 (1), 43-62.

Fine, C. and Rush, E., 2016. “Why does all the Girls have to Guy Pink Stuff?” The Ethics and Science of the Gendered Toy Marketing Debate. Journal of Business Ethics [online], 149 (4), 769-784.

Kimmel, A. J., 2015. Connecting with consumers via live buzz marketing: public perceptions and the role of ethical ideology. Business Ethics: A European Review [online], 24 (2), 205-220.

Russell, P., 2014. Morrisons to switch from gender to price-based toy marketing. Marketing Week [online], 14 February 2014. Available from: https://www.marketingweek.com/morrisons-to-switch-from-gender-to-price-based-toy-marketing-2/ [Accessed 2 November 2020]

Skocajic, M. M., Radosavljevic, J. G., Okicic, M. G., Jankovic, I. O., 2019. Boys Just Don’t! Gender Stereotyping and Sanctioning of Counter-Stereotypical Behavior in Preschoolers. Sex Roles [online], 82 (3/4), 163-172.

The NPD Group, 2015. Toying with Gender-Neutral Labels. NPD [online]. 13 August 2015. Available from: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/tips-trends-takeaways/toying-with-gender-neutral-labels/ [Accessed 2 November 2020]

Todd, B. K., Fisher, R. A., Costa, S. D., Roestorf, A., Harbour, K., Hardiman, P. and Barry, J. A., 2017. Sex differences in children’s toy preferences: A systematic review, meta-regression, and meta-analysis. Infant & Child Development [online], 37 (2), 1-29.

Weisgram, E. S., 2019. Reducing Gender Stereotypes in Toys and Play for Smarter, Stronger and Kinder Kids. American Journal of Play [online], 12 (1), 74-88.