I unearthed the answer on Sunday at Liverpool Arena: it's keeping a three-year-old amused for an hour and a half. 
Pulling off a stunt like that takes some doing, as any reader with experience of three year old boys will tell you.  And it turned out to be easy in the end - I took my eldest, Rory, to watch Everton Tigers, the city's premier league basketball team.
Non-stop action, baskets galore (that's 'goals' to the uninitiated) and plenty of razzamatazz to fill in the time-outs and other tactical manoeuvres basketball coaches use to frustrate the opposition.
Throw in Cody's Cats (anyone know the collective noun for women's midriffs?) and you had the dads' attention sorted, too. 
But to bring things back to marketing - for that is my brief - the key for young Rory was the tie-in with Everton.  The club's name was one of the first he learned to pronounce and he knows that it's daddy's team, too, so is happy to proclaim them - not that he could describe what they are or tell you any of their history.
But I want him to develop his affinity (a good marketing word, that) and basketball offers a family-friendly, expletive-free brand extension to the Everton franchise (may the Lord forgive me).
And so we found ourselves in Everton Two buying him a brand new scarf before the tip-off.  It was twice as long as him and he wore it proudly once he'd learned not to trip over it.  His little beaming face was worth ten times the £7.99 asking price.
Rory's pre-match anticipation was genuine as we walked through the Albert Dock towards the Arena and, once in sight, he raced across Duke's Dock bridge towards it.  There followed an hour and a half of "Everton this" and "Tigers that" as he absorbed all things toffee on the banks of the Royal Blue Mersey.
Walking back home up the hill he proclaimed that "that was great!", before telling us how he shook the hand of the team mascot, Toxteth the Tiger.
And so it is that he has abandoned those great, ephemeral pretenders to a young boy's affection, Fireman Sam and Bob the Builder, and opted for a brand with history, culture and tales of derring-do built-in. 
It's that back story again that I've mentioned in previous blogs, but this time dressed up creatively to attract a younger audience, before passing them up the ladder to the parent brand.
Thing is, he'll have to wait until he's ten before I take him to Goodison.  He'll be a basketball expert by then.

Dougal Paver is managing director at Paver Smith