Who Would Have Thought?

Imagine you are a venture capitalist, and some little punk entrepreneur comes in and presents a business plan that projects that little kids would be adopting virtual pets. Instead of parents having to clean poop and puke, when children come calling for a chocolate lab puppy, they would introduce the little ones to virtual pets. Sure, they would puke and poop and get sick and be taken to the vet, but ONLY virtually. When the family travels, the scrambling for kennel reservation need only have limited panic factor.

Well, in truth, someone did think of this brilliant psychological play. And Neopets was born.

Read more about the opportunity in marketing to kids and pre-teens, an emerging, evolving segment born out of a generation’s extreme level of comfort with computers and technology that my generation certainly did not possess.

What I like about this segment is that it is essentially a creativity oriented toy business, a bit of an education business, and a whole lot of fun. Most likely, you would be marketing to parents, through parenting web sites (we’ll do a report on that too, shortly), who would then be introducing their child to your site.

So, if you have a single such brilliant insight into parent-child psychology, this is your segment!