Strategy & Brand

Raising girls is tough.

Raising confident, curious, inspired, courageous, authentic, well-rounded, well-educated young women who don’t feel pressured to conform to the world’s view of perfection is beyond daunting. We’re looking for parents of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls willing to talk honestly about parenting girls.

We’re setting out to radically improve the lives of girls. We’re conducting a short 6 question parent survey as part of our ongoing research.

If you’re a parent of a 7th, 8th, or 9th grade girl, you can lend your insights here:

If you know other parents working hard to raise inspired young women, please pass this survey along so they can share their wealth of heard-won insights.

View the 2010 Threats to Girlhood Report

Threats to Girlhood include all of the issues, mindsets, factors, trends, and circumstances that impact girls’ lifelong health, wellness, happiness, and ability to succeed. Identifying current Threats to Girlhood is an important step towards advancing the well being of girls, the possibilities for women, and the strength of communities.  The 2010 Threats to Girlhood report issued by BlackDog’s foundation Serious Play for Serious Girls provides a collective view detailing the breadth and depth of the challenges that girls face.  Good brands will use this report to guard against inflicting these challenges developed as an outcome of their actions.
Emerging research on the state of girlhood highlights the interconnection of girlhood threats. Education and poverty, body image issues and advertising, sexual abuse and self-harm, conformism and commercialism; the issues threatening our girls aren’t isolated and unrelated.  Radically reducing Threats to Girlhood will require that we, collectively, work to improve all the interconnected causes along the way, not just the side effects.

No one single parent, politician, celebrity role model, company, organization, product, publication, or advertisement is solely responsible for the development of girlhood threats. We are all, however, responsible for the ways in which we contribute to these threats or fail to contribute to their solution. Radically reducing Threats to Girlhood requires a holistic solution: an out-of-the-box and into-the-hands-of decision-makers solution that takes the whole girl, the world she lives in, and the interconnection of the threats facing her, all into account.

This report is certainly not exhaustive, but we hope it will help show the scope of the problem and the urgent need for a new perspective. Because Threats to Girlhood are continually changing, shifting, and evolving, this is an ongoing project intended to continue addressing threats and working towards solutions.

We believe that research shouldn’t be remanded to vaults and scholarly journals, so if your research helps identify a Threat to Girlhood or a solution to a girlhood threat, we hope you’ll pass it along for possible inclusion in the report. Please send your stats, facts, and insights on girlhood threats, along with a copy of the published research or report in which the insights appear, to us for review.

The missing piece in children’s branding isn’t a strategy for multi-media tie-ins, advergame licensing, or on-the-money, pop culture predictions. No, not this time; more of the same has only made the void more evident.
What is missing, and what is needed, is conviction. Purposed conviction turned dedicated intent, represented by a sworn commitment much like the Hippocratic Oath. Not a certificate program, membership to a created association, three days at a conference in Des Moines, or a “good enough” seal of approval representing lackluster standards. Children’s branding is in need of an internalized dictum to “first, do no harm” that aligns integrity, organizational purpose, brand management, and the optimal development of children. This sworn commitment requires a guiding philosophy that holds individual ability and judgment accountable, demands respect for scientific discovery, and vows to regard the holistic care of children and childhood above all other competing concerns. It also requires an adopted practice of responsibility and professionalism dedicated to promoting the highest standards of well being and optimal development at each developmental stage and phase, guarding the season of childhood.

Brands don’t exist in vacuums- they impact, influence, and shape our global ecology. From the modeling and messaging conveyed to children through the media, to the nutritional content of their breakfast cereal, children are being molded, influenced, and impacted by the brands they see, hear, and use.

Ideals to purvey, values to reinforce, cultural differences to overcome, stigmas and stereotypes to destroy, and threats to childhood are all too plentiful. What is sparse, are companies that guard the season of childhood, see their vocation as a service, and that champion the role and opportunity to proactively influence the healthy real life needs of children.

Children need inspired playthings and wholesome messaging to help them tackle real world issues. Brands are either meeting the demand with constructive tools, placating children with shallow entertainment, or are selling out by buying into the notion that what they produce, promote, and contribute is inconsequential to the cultural realities of our day. If companies don’t begin adopting actionable, responsible standards rooted in high ideals, transparency, health, and holistic wellbeing, the industry will become subject to restrictive legislation.