Young Eyes On the Prize

Sweepstakes Increasingly Target Children

Send your parents packing! Win a free weekend for them at a hotel, compliments of Nickelodeon and the maker of Sweethearts candy and gum.

Or get the ultimate $25,000 basketball court built in your backyard -- the big prize from Ritz Bits.

Kids like to be winners, and nobody knows that better than the U.S. manufacturers turning to sweepstakes to promote their products.

With more companies selling more to children than ever, firms have to find new ways to attract their attention, said Laurie Klein, vice president of Just Kid Inc., a Connecticut marketing firm. That's why firms continue to introduce new flavors, colors and shapes to such tried-and-true products as cereal, ketchup and crackers, and why an estimated $15 billion is spent annually to promote children's products on TV, radio, the Internet, magazines and just about everywhere kids can be found.

Sweepstakes are one more way to "break through the clutter," and distinguish one product from another, Klein said.

Prizes are nothing new, but the Internet has upped the ante from the simple premiums and rewards once offered in boxes of Cracker Jack and cereals to constant, daily promotions.

"We're seeing a real proliferation across the board in sweepstakes" for both kids and adults, said Jill Collins, vice president of marketing and partnerships for Strottman International, a California family-marketing firm. The reason, she said: " 'Free' is still the favorite American word." Critics worry that sweepstakes are an unfair way to promote products to children who are too young to understand that the odds are stacked heavily against them.

Some contests are for small rewards, such as a game to play on a company's Web site. Others give victors enhanced powers to play the online games.

But many dangle far greater temptations, such as Kellogg's Corn Pops' current sweepstakes to win cell phones, each with $450 of prepaid minutes. Barbie is now offering three 6- to 13-year-old girls a chance to win a shopping spree, makeover and visit with teen star Lindsay Lohan. And Campbell Soup Co. is touting a chance at a one-week trip to a private island for family and friends -- complete with a personal chef to prepare "favorite kinds of Campbell's soup and SpaghettiOs."

"If you're a kid, winning stuff is cool," said Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon Television, the leading children's cable television network, which runs about one to two contests a month. "They make kids feel important and fulfill their fantasy to make their lives exciting," Zarghami said. What's more, she said, they help make kids feel more loyal to Nickelodeon, especially when the channel shows a winner being selected.

Some psychologists and marketing critics, however, say the sweepstakes are unfair and deceptive when targeted at children too young to understand that their chances of winning are slim.

Susan E. Linn, a Harvard psychologist and author of "Consuming Kids," thinks sweepstakes aren't a good deal because "kids don't understand the odds, and marketers don't exactly trumpet them."