We all love new things: jackets, shirts, shoes, smartphones and apps. Who doesn’t feel good when they have the latest and the greatest thing that draws the attention and admiration of our peers? But why do we feel so good and how did we know what product was going to make us feel so good? Advertisers. The modern American child is clearly a target for companies seeking to make more and more money from kids who constantly want more and more stuff. But advertisers fail to acknowledge the harm they are doing to children and our society, and it is clear that advertising to children and teens unfairly takes advantage of their inability to identify when and how they are being manipulated. Marketing and persuasive techniques are powerful tools for …show more content…
As noted in “Facts about Marketing to Children” from The Center for the New American Dream, in 1983, prior to the federal deregulation of marketing in media, advertisers spent $100 million on television ads targeting children. In contrast, by 2006, 22 years after deregulation, that amount had grown to $40 billion. The documentary Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Kids notes that that is an 852% increase. Companies employ professional researchers and child psychologists to help create their marketing strategies. Some of these strategies include 360-degree marketing campaigns that bury kids in what Michael Rich, MD calls a “media blitz” of over 3000 images per day. Consuming Kids describes the various blitzes and notes how they are all part of watching television ads, listening to radio, and playing video games where products are placed directly in a game. The internet is the newest advertising frontier and even uses the strategy of employing children to market to other unsuspecting children at sleep- overs and during school. The USA TODAY article also describes how 77kids by American Eagle and Webkinz encourage students to download their own image and see themselves as glamorous rock stars, in the products, or “sharing” with friends …show more content…
Psychologists point out that the “media blitz” targets what is known to be a vulnerable group because children lack the ability to “discern when they are being manipulated.” That means that unlike adults, children are being sucked in unknowingly to believe the messages advertisers create. Their mind is being changed without knowing it – adults at least are aware that companies are trying to get them to buy or believe something. Kids simply can’t understand what’s happening to them. As part of the new media blitz, not only are children being advertised to without parents’ knowledge, like at sleepovers, but they are also being marketed to in places that are traditionally marketing free: schools, daycares, and homes. In an American Psychologists Association article, “Driving Teen Egos – and buying – through ‘branding’” a psychologist who supports regulating advertising to teens, Allen D. Kanner, PhD, points out that children suffer because “The message that doesn't reach teens is that what is important is ‘how you think, what you like...and who you are’” rather than what and how much stuff you have. In the same article, Margo Maine, PhD, who works with girls with eating disorders, mentions the effects on girls especially: “Teenage girls spend over $9 billion on makeup and skin products alone, an example of advertisers
In the essay “Kid Kustomers” by Eric Schlosser, the author addresses how companies use advertising as a way to lure children into buying their products. The author eventually convinces the reader that children then influence their parents into buying the product as well. Schlosser incorporates statistics about how much McDonald's sold their happy meals to children between the age of three and nine. This is simply because children watch more tv and go on the internet more; therefore, they are more likely to see more advertising, and eventually pursue their parents to buy them the product. In an informative tone, the author is speaking to parents with young
In “Marketing To Children Gets More Savvy” they use real life ads to explain their writing. They talk about how children now more than ever have technology surrounding them, along with ads that come with it. For example, Webkinz, a kid gaming website, has ads posted everywhere. Webkinz has had ads on the side of the website that tells kids that if they watch an advertisement and answer all the questions from the video, they then can get a prize from Webkinz. When mothers were told about this they said that they had no idea that is was happening, even if it was in their
For many years, corporations have targeted adults, but as the years progressed their main focus and targeted audience have been children. Countless corporations often focus their products such as toys, clothes, and drugs to children in order to increase their own economic gain. In Juliet Schor’s article, “ Selling to children: The Marketing of Cool”, she mentions how products are accepted and interpreted by children in today’s society. However, in Eric Schlosser article, “ Kid Kustomers”, he emphasizes on the constant antagonizing strategies through ads and televisions shows to target kids. Although Juliet Schors and Eric Schlosser are both speaking about corporations marketing to children, their articles differ quite significantly. While they both speak about corporation and their marketing directed to children, Schor maintains her focus on how society perceived these products as cool or geeky, while Schlosser focuses his article on the negative way corporations have marketed their products to underage children.
No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products.
One of the most successful marketers is quoted in the article “Get kids to nag their parents and nag them well”(260). In the initial few sections, he discussed the present time effects of the advertising on youngsters. Through this he contend that, previously, there weren't numerous child based marketing organizations that concentrated exclusively with respect to children and have their own kids' divisions, while now, they have huge amounts of organizations that makes a whole advertising division for the
Teenagers have a “... need for independence, rebellion, and personal control,” (Source F). Marketers can use this in many ways. They can use it to their economical advantage by manipulating teenagers into buying their goods. But, PSA’s can really show teenagers the facts and promote good morals. Recent studies look into how advertisements affect adolescents, “... these studies show that social marketing has successfully changed health behavior such as smoking, physical activity, and condom use, as well as behavioral mediators such as knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to these behaviors,” (Source F). While it's true that it's easy for teenagers to be manipulated by commercials, a lot of other commercials can be a strong influence in building better lives for them. If people could focus on the pros rather then the cons, then they could see the big picture of marketing to
In today’s media obsessed society, youth is greatly influenced by advertising. For example, Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technologies is how they ,“Online games like Webkinz show ads on the site draw youth to buy the product or just to look at it for ‘money’”. Because this tactic works, the ads are an excellent at make youth to talk about this and be annoyed. In Facts about Marketing to Children, it says, “Children pack 8.5 hours of media a day’, is what the Facts about Marketing to Children says.” Because children are on the media so much it is easy for marketers to advertise and get children to buy the product. “ Anne Lappe says that when her daughter grows up, and goes to a movie, the character might have a soda or fast food.”
One of the reasons that Americans suffer from affluenza more than consumers in other countries is because of the advertising in America. Businesses, marketers, and advertisers have discovered that colonizing the imagination of the child is the most effective way of securing a life-long conspicuous consumer. Between 1980 and 1997, the amount spent on children's advertising in America zoomed from $100 million to $1.5 billion a year. American children watch up to 200 television commercials per day. The average 12-year-old in America spends 48 hours a week watching television
Teenagers are easily impressionable, crave to be cool, and stride to cash in their pockets. This group strides through a world of marketing, spending over one billion dollars themselves as a whole and spending another fifty billion in “guilt money” from their parents. Each teen will perceive about three thousand ads in a day and ten million by the time they reach the age of eighteen. Blizzards of brands are try to get teens to buy by studying their day-to-day lifestyles. The marketing strategies and their employees have deteriorated teenager society.
Statistics show that today companies spend nearly $17 billion annually marketing to kids. This paper will explore the effect that advertisements have on the growing mind of a child. It paper will support the view of the video “Consuming Kids” in the context that yes in fact advertising to children is a social problem and that adults should understand the seriousness of this matter; and they should also take steps to help the change the environment that their children are part of in-order to build a healthier future for them. The first section of the paper will take glimpses into early, tween and teen ages of a child and examine the social effects of technology and advertisement. The second section of the paper will discuss the
“From a young age, children are targeted with brand names. Throughout children's programming they are shelled with commercials for variety name toys. “Retail stores and different companies make commercials to advertise certain brands of clothing that they are trying to push. All of this information bombards children. The ads also seem on billboards which are seen on highways and in cities. They are also present in teen and even pre-teen magazines. Children are targeted by brand names as soon as they are able to watch TV.”1
Throughout modern society, children have become the primary consumers of marketing (Hill, 2011, p. 348). As the documentary Consuming Kids illustrates, infants are easily deceived by society, culture, and especially media scams (Barbaro, 2008). Marketing has shifted the focus of children from traditional playing to various consumerist desires. This paper will explore the causes of the mass decline in childhood identity and the social implications involved. The impact of marketing for children will be examined through its effects on culture and society, children’s identity, consumerist tendencies, the increase in need for media and their effects through symbolic interactionism. Jennifer Ann Hill states, "Consumerism has led to a host of seemingly endless needs for sophisticated electronic media technology, making it increasingly difficult to provide children with an environment that allows for creativity or original thinking" (Hill, 2011, p. 352)??*** and the presence of this marketing is the catalyst to several different issues in the development of children (Hill, 2011, p. 352). In this report, I will contend that marketing is detrimental to the growth of children shaping youth to become lifelong consumers and how it is a societal problem.
With children being the target, the way children establish friends and bonds with them is effected. Children naturally want to impress their peers. With this in mind, advertisements use this as a marketing advantage. Media and products that target children are now developing more on what’s trendy. This causes children to think that they are defined by what they have rather than who they
I am responding to a group presentation that I gave with Konnor Miller and Sephora Mentado over Analyzing Children Commercials and Advertising. The three of us gave this presentation on Tuesday, November 24th before Thanksgiving break. We started off our presentation by playing part of a short YouTube video on the effects of commercial advertising on children. This video showed how most young children are unaware of the amount of advertising they are exposed to, or do not recognize what advertising is at all. The video went on to show how children are able to remember commercials and products while forgetting important political figures such as the president. It also listed
In a world of consumerism, children represent a giant portion of an important demographic to marketers because of their purchasing power. They greatly influence their parents buying decisions and are the consumers of the future. Since children have this advantage, advertisers know that they should be a main target. Advertising was created to influence the creation of the consumer. This method became a revolutionary development. The advertisers’ goal was to cater to the consumers’ wants and desires. Although the advertisers used what they knew from the consumer to shape their wants to create in commodities. Marketers and advertisers use several tactics such as promotion, positioning, brand voice, demographic segmentation, narrowcasting,