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Marketing And Children Essay

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American children are consumers of media and are exposed to a plethora of messages on a daily basis, most targeted directly at them (Neeley 2004). And there are not just one, but at least three groups who are out to take advertising to children out back for a spanking! One example of marketing towards the youth market is the Kellogg's website "Fun-K-Town". The site is devoted solely to kids and their "favorite" breakfast brands through the use of games. The site is looked at in depth below.
Section 1: Marketing or Entertainment You might think a lot of money goes into putting together a website such as this, especially with a decent selection of games. The truth though, is that these games cost less than more traditional forms of …show more content…

A good number of games are on the site gives children,

who seem to have a knack for short attention spans, many other options if they grow tired of a game. The site groups the games by brand as opposed to by type or by name, giving the children the ability to easily pick out their favorite product and play games the only feature the characters from that brand. While the site should prove to be entertaining to it's targeted demographic, I find the site to be more advertising than entertainment. Even thought the site is full of games, the amount of advertising is almost sickening and the fact that it is laid out by brand serves as a way to reinforce brand loyalty at a very early age. Technically I am going with the site being both advertising and entertainment, but I think it is decidedly clear that Kellogg's has this site up for monetary purposes more so than kids entertainment. One site that reviewed "Fun-K-Land" even started the article with a highlighted warning about the amount of advertising. There just seems to be too much there for the site to be viewed another way.
Section 2: Influence "Children start to identify frequently seen characters and may begin to demonstrate desire for those characters and related products that they see..."(Neeley 2004) This leads directly into a topic that I brought up in the last section: Being able to choose by

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