Children make great customers. One needs only to watch TV with a child to realize how receptive they are to advertising. My grandson, for instance, ignores much of what he sees on TV save for a few favorite shows and cartoons. But when he hears the commercials come on, he rushes in front of the set, rapt and eager to interact.
When we want him to perform before us and our guests, we need only sing from his preferred commercials and he will jump and dance and gesticulate. Needless to say, we base our choices when going grocery shopping on his preferences, and he can be quite loud when it comes to expressing his fondness for certain brands.
As Unicef, the United Nations’ agency for children, asserts, the relationship between businesses and children goes beyond sales and profit. Addressing the business community, Lotta Sylwander, Unicef representative in the Philippines, pointed out that children “are not just a source of revenue.” Numbering about
33 million at present, Filipino children are the future—future buyers or customers, future employees, future leaders, whose present determines all of our futures.
The other day, Unicef hosted the local launch of the “Children’s Rights and Business Principles” (CRBP), a set of 10 principles “to guide private-sector companies on the full range of actions they can take in the workplace, marketplace and community to respect and support children’s rights.”
The CRBP seeks to address a full range of concerns affecting children, from the elimination of child labor to ensuring the protection and safety of children; from making sure that products for children are safe and beneficial while fitting the marketing strategy to respecting and promoting children’s rights.
Asked which issue, among the many problems that Filipino children confront today, she personally would like to be addressed, Sylwander mentioned malnutrition, noting that up to 40 percent of children here are afflicted by stunting. Another special area of concern for her is the victimization of children by sexual abusers online.
One would think that the retail sector would have little to do with child protection, apart from ensuring the safety and quality of clothes, toys and other merchandise. But Annie Garcia of the SM malls says there are other ways that businesses can help. Populated by thousands—maybe millions—of customers, the different SM malls are an ideal “medium” for promoting the rights of children. On the more practical and useful aspect, SM has also set aside rooms for breastfeeding mothers, with no less than Hans Sy himself suggesting that these be located near the clinics where the nurses could help assist the mothers.
For Wong Xin Yi, the Singapore-based advocacy officer of H&M, involvement has meant a more proactive approach. For instance, the store has a program which asks customers to donate used clothes which are then sorted and resold, with a portion of the proceeds going to Unicef among other partners.
Among the business people attending the launch were representatives of business chambers, like the Makati Business Club represented by Edgar Chua and a representative of the Chinese Chambers of Commerce.
Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala of the Ayala Group, speaking for the business community, averred that “there needs to be an evolution in the way we view our responsibility to children.” Businesses, he said, impact the lives of children directly, adding that business needs “to view our work through a different lens: that which also puts children front and center in our strategies and operations.”
Business has a “tremendous capacity—and in fact, the responsibility”—to “effect positive change in society,” added Zobel, asserting that “businesses cannot operate in a vacuum, without thinking of social concerns.”
Indeed, the private sector plays a major role in uplifting the lives of children, today by ensuring their future by paying parents and family members decent pay for decent work, and tomorrow by creating an environment in which they can reach maturity in safety, in good health and with good values. That is, indeed, value for money.