Targeted ads, but with crayons

G’day, friends! Do you ever whistle while you work? If you do, maybe you, too, will one day be invited to whistle the National Anthem at a major sporting event.

I wonder if bird-watchers ever hear him in the park and mistake his whistling for a bird 🤔 

To the newsletter!

Activity of the week

Expecting a gift soon? Maybe your birthday is on the horizon. Or maybe a holiday commemorating your amazing job as a parent is around the corner. How can you improve the odds of receiving a great gift without blatantly asking for what you actually want? Since some people think it’s rude to ask for a gift in the first place, how can you subtly, more gracefully ask for your preferred gift?

As most humans know, kids have no filter. They ask for exactly what they want at any given moment. It’s truly a blessing and a curse. Now you can use their lack of a filter to your advantage. In this activity, participants will create hyper-targeted ads to post around their home.

This exercise is a great opportunity to teach kids how to be more curious about their surroundings and explore how people are, often unknowingly, influenced by the world around them. Thanks to Bushwick Analytica, who ran a similar exercise with NYC middle schoolers, for the inspiration.

Step 1: Grab a few pieces of blank paper, a few markers or crayons, and some painter’s tape or washi tape.

Step 2: Each participant takes a turn answering the following questions:

  • What is a gift you’d like to receive?

  • What is a value you want others to share?

Step 3: Each participant takes one piece of paper, folds it in half lengthwise, and then unfolds the paper so it lies flat. On the left side of the paper-fold, each participant will then draw a picture representing their answer to the first question in Step 2, and add a caption. For example, if your kiddo answered “A Patek Phillipe watch” to the first question in Step 2, they can draw a watch with a caption “Expensive watches are cool! Buy them for a loved one!” If kids are on the younger side, help them write their caption.

Step 4: On the right side of the paper-fold, write “Target Audience”. Again, if kids are on the younger side, help them with this step.

Step 5: Each participant then takes turns specifying who their target audience is for their first advertisement by answering the following questions. Have your kiddos go first and write down their responses to the questions under the “Target Audience” section on their advertisement.

  • Who do you think would be most likely to purchase the gift?

  • Where do they live?

  • How old do you think they are?

  • How much money do you think they should have to buy the gift, if any?

After they’re done, it’s your turn to answer the questions and write down your responses. Here’s an example of an advertisement below using slightly different target audience characteristics:

Step 6: Repeat Step 3 and Step 4.

Step 7: Specify who your kid’s target audience is for their second advertisement by having them answer the following questions and help them write their responses under the “Target Audience” section of their second ad.

  • Who do you want to share this value with?

  • Where do they live?

  • How old do you think they should be?

  • What similar interests/values/likes/dislikes do they share?

After they’re done, it’s your turn to answer the questions and write down your responses on your second ad.

Here’s another example below:

Step 8: Using painter’s tape or washi tape, put up your advertisements around your home wherever you think they’re most likely to be seen by your target audience. That’s it! Let the magic of marketing do it’s thing.

And last, a friendly reminder that gifts are just one way to show someone you’re thinking of them. It’s the thought and sentiment of any gesture that matter most. Kids will remind you of that, sometimes when you least expect it.

Book of the week

Ever wonder what the television show Parks and Recreation would be like if it were a children’s book? Wonder no more. Sofia Valdez, Future Prez by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts is a children’s story about Leslie Knope if I’ve ever read one. Sofia Valdez, Future Prez shows how people, no matter what age and regardless of fancy titles, can make a difference in their community. Plus, it rhymes. Sometimes that matters.

Fun “fact” fact: Andrea Beaty and David Roberts have created an amazing book series highlighting the curiosities and passions of different children (like Sofia) in Miss Lila Greer’s classroom. All of their books should be bookshelf staples.

Fun “fiction” fact: Leslie Knope was a great gift-giver.

Not for tots

Here is this week’s not for tots segment where we share some internet finds/treats/toys exclusively for the kidults in the room.

Kidult of the week

Many kids grow up dreaming of becoming president. Well, Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, made that childhood dream a reality earlier this week.

In the process, Sheinbaum broke through 200 years of male-led government and will also be the first person from a Jewish background to lead the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

How did she get here? Well, Sheinbaum entered politics in 2000, when she was appointed environment secretary of Mexico City. After leaving the role in 2006, Sheinbaum committed herself to studying energy and climate sciences, joining the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and becoming part of the team that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. No big deal.

After she got bored with climate science (my words, not her’s), she became the first woman elected head of the Tlalpan district of Mexico City in 2015, serving until 2017. The next year, she was elected head of the government of the whole city – again, the first woman to do so – only stepping down in June 2023 to embark on her successful run for president.

Based on all Sheinbaum’s milestones so far, it seems like there’s much more left to accomplish for Mexico’s president-elect.

Stat of the week

“A year before [Alzheimer’s] diagnosis, people were 17.2 percent more likely to be delinquent on their mortgage payments than before the onset of the disease, and 34.3 percent more likely to be delinquent on their credit card bills.” (New York Times)

A team of economists and medical experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University combined Medicare records with data from Equifax, the credit bureau, to study how people’s borrowing behavior changed in the years before and after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or a similar disorder.

The results of the study showed that credit scores and delinquencies “consistently worsen over time as diagnosis approaches, and so it literally mirrors the changes in cognitive decline that we’re observing.”

Thinking about tomorrow, today

Across all relationships, practice sincere apologies. When an apology is sincere, the brain releases oxytocin, a hormone associated with social bonding and trust. This process sets off a chain reaction in the receiver’s brain, potentially leading to forgiveness and reconciliation. An apology, in the end, is an act of healing.

How does this apply to caretaking? According to several studies from the National Library of Medicine, there is strong evidence that there is a connection between parent–child coregulation (e.g. repairing difficult parent–child interactions) and children’s developing regulatory capacities. That means a child’s systems of control (e.g. how they manage their emotions) will be more resilient in uncertain, stressful environments if there are increased and repeated moments of parent–child coregulation.

Parenting-ish Headlines

We’ll google it for you

On the Internet, we’re all at least six-feet tall. But, in the physical world, what if you identify as a male and are under 5 foot 9?

Well, don’t be ashamed. Recognize that you’re a short king, a man who realizes that his lack of height has nothing to do with his perception of his own self worth. Even though the original “Short King Spring” was in 2022, short kings are always in season if you want them to be.

Modern examples of short kings are Jeremy Allen White, the lead of Hulu’s show The Bear and the Internet’s current King of Short Kings, Tom Holland of Spiderman/Zendaya fame, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Translated to 1800s French, short king means “Napoleon Bonaparte”. I’m no historian, but I think Napoleon might have been the original short king 🤔 

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