Memory Is More Indelible Than Ink
A 2019 Stanford study found that adults who played Pokémon as children have a dedicated brain region that fires specifically when they see Pikachu. We're not talking about a vague familiarity here, but about a dedicated neural region that is carved out during childhood and still fires decades later. You may be familiar with the mechanism called neuroplasticity, in which the brain reorganizes itself based on experience, most aggressively between ages 5 and 12. Meaning, whatever children interact with repeatedly during that window gets permanent neural real estate.
Essentially, the visual word form area doesn't exist at birth, but it develops when kids learn to read. Much like London taxi drivers physically grow their hippocampus by memorizing streets, the young pokémon players built dedicated recognition circuitry for Squirtle. Under the same viewing conditions, researchers saw the same neural outcome across nearly every player. Ergo,
the brain doesn't care what you expose it to. It optimizes for whatever shows up most.
That makes me a bit uncomfortable. What about you?
It is not too broad a jump to surmise that early, repeated exposure during developmental windows creates durable, involuntary brand recognition that persists for decades. So the child who sees your brand consistently at age 7 might be building awareness and building neural infrastructure. This could go in a couple of directions:
1. Opportunity for brands that show up reliably during developmental years can earn recall and maybe hardwired familiarity. McDonald's, Disney, and Lego aren't just building brand loyalty if they are also building neural shortcuts that operate below conscious preference.
2. Asking if a brand can do this intentionally, and the science cited below suggests it can, at what point does effective brand strategy become exploitation of a developmental vulnerability?
If children cannot consent to having their neural architecture shaped, then they don't know it's happening (their parents largely don't either). The same mechanism that encoded Charizard into the ventral temporal cortex is now being targeted at scale, with infinite scroll and algorithmically optimized engagement by platforms with far more sophisticated tools than a Game Boy. Yowza!
Does understanding the mechanism change the obligation when someone pitches a kids-first campaign?
PS. You think you have a memory, but it has you.