Commenting on blogs and forums
I'm working on a project for company's upcoming book. We thought it would be cool for me to ccomment on blogs and forums as one of the lead child characters. Do you foresee that as being a problem, especially if the blog targets Tweens? And what if I only commented on adult targeted blogs,but as the child character?
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Posting on other people's content may be seen as hijacking their audience to promote your own project. That's the only real ethical problem I see. So if you created your own blog, or commented in very public spaces that don't "belong" to anyone, you should be fine.
As for it being misleading to children... you know what? So is every other form of advertising that has ever existed. Manipulating people into buying something they normally wouldn't have is literally the whole point of advertising. If anything, I would much rather buy a book because I identified with a character, as opposed than buying something because I thought it would make me cool, or because all my friends were doing it.
You may be interested to know that some people already do this. There are a few webcomics out where the artists involved have set up fake accounts where they answer fan mail in character. I think it's quite cool.
The problem I see is what you probably intend: that young readers will believe this person actually exists.
Many adults take everything they find in writing at face value, apparently unable to imagine that people make up stuff and post it on the web. Children around ten years old ("tweens") have an even weaker ability to keep fact and fiction apart. My son, aged seven, still does not properly understand what an actor does and how a live action movie is not real. A twelve year old will have developed a lot from this naïveté, but they are still very gullible and trusting, and certainly don't understand that persons promoting produts are playing characters from that product and fake-interacting with them on the internet.
Personally, I find this practice extremely offensive, and it is one reason why I try to keep my son from the net for as long as I can. Human interaction and friendship is fundamentally important for our well-being. Our physical and mental health depend on our social life. I think it is unethical to abuse this basic human need and simulate it to sell a product. If I found that my son was interested in the product of a company that did what you describe, I would do everything in my power to make sure he understood how he was being duped and lead him to lose all interest in a company that abuses his feelings.
The marketing department for the movie Ex-Machina recently did a similar thing, they made a Tinder profile for their main character and had her 'talking' with real people who were looking for dates, then ended up linking them to the website for the movie.
This breached Tinder's Terms & Conditions, and I think there's now a massive lawsuit directed at them (but I'm not 100% on that).
Outside of the MASSIVE ethical reasons not to do it that @what has described, it is very possible you will be breaking the law on a lot of sites by marketing the product on these websites, even indirectly.
My suggestion: don't do it. Unless you want to trawl through the site's T's & C's to make sure you're not breaching their rules of use policies.
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