Nancy Drew They're Not

Is this the face of corporate hegemony:



Or is this?



A shadowy group called the Girls’ Intelligence Agency (which offers very little information about itself), is described on Yahoo thus:

Slumber party guests have more to worry about than frozen underwear these days. The Girls' Intelligence Agency (GIA) is a marketing firm that collects information about the buying habits of female 'tweens (girls ages 8-to-13) through its "Slumber-Party-In-A-Box" marketing tool. GIA recruits girls, secret-agent style, to host slumber parties where they open a box full of never-before-seen products, including movie and TV previews, branded T-shirts, and samples, aimed at the 'tween market. The company collects girls' reactions from thousands of slumber parties and reports them to clients such as Disney, FOX, and Capitol Records.

"They claim to have a 'network of over 40,000 secret agent influencers nationwide." Creepy.

Ever wonder where your friend Suzy got such new schlock? And why she invited you to her slumber parties even though you weren't really good friends? Well, now you know.

Business is business, and business must grow (as Dr. Seuss used to say), but doesn't this seem a bit desperate? If the only way to expand the market is through espionage geared at younger and younger kids, eventually the limit will be reached. What will the corporations do when there's nowhere to go? Maybe ours will be the first generation to have pre-natal advertising; a Motorola instead of a Mozart effect.