Abstract

Despite the explosion of Snss and the growing interest of brands for on line conversations, analysis on the relationship between consumers and brands in these environments is still insufficient. This is particularly evident in relation to the presence of children in Snss. Investigation on the relationship between kids and brands has significant implications for the debate on regulation of marketing messages towards children. The starting point is to assume that social networks introduce a very important change in the scenario opened by web 2.0: the interplay between online communication and daily life. The ability to manipulate, create and share messages, brings the contents and objects exchanged into personal relationships; messages in turn become part of children's real life. This paper proposes an initial exploratory research, which was conducted through direct interviews to children and teachers, focusing on kids perception and ability to recognize brand messages.