My View

            

               Children view in average approximately 40 000 advertisements each year. Although the kinds of products advertised remained more or less the same, the buying power of kids has increased. Children shape the buying patterns of the family which means that through children advertising companies can easily influence the entire family (Calvert, 2008). Moreover, children are spending more and more time online, playing games and watching videos. This fact is great for marketers! Traditional marketing techniques are much more expensive while comparing with online advertising. For example, Wild Planet Toys spent 50,000 dollars for online ads instead of spending 2 million dollar for television advertising campaign (Calvert, 2008).

            What marketing techniques are used to achieve company goals? One of them is repetition. It simply means to advertise so product over and over. Attention-getting production features are techniques designed to attract children´s interest. They do it thought sounds effects, action, movement, rapid pacing and loud music. Next technique is celebrity endorsement. Well known faces on cereal boxes help to sell products. Also, sponsors logo is popular among marketers. Bolt, popular website, had a Pepsi logo on its music page, which increased awareness of their brand among teens. Furthermore, viral marketing is created when people talk about some product.  Far more dangerous technique is tracking software and spyware. Marketers want to know who is visiting their websites to figure out how effective their strategies are. They are using cookies or electronic bits which gathers these information is someone register to their website. Even though they violate the privacy of users while spy on their computers without their knowledge, it is not illegal action. Tracking these information provides extensive information for marketers (Calvert, 2008).

            So, how these marketing practices affect children? Using Jean Piaget´s theory of cognitive development we can elaborate this question. From age two to age seven, children focus on properties such as how a product looks. Between age seven and age eleven, kids start to understand world more realistically and they realize the aim of advertising is to sell products. From age twelve upward they are starting to look on ads more cynically (Calvert, 2008). Next important question to answer is how children process advertisements. Ads that are full of color images, happy music and lyrics can replay in kid´s head and according to this they will remember the product very easily and do not have to be even aware of this. Researchers found that repetition of ads increases children´s requests for purchases of products. Marketer use premiums, bonus toys and staff, which also increases children´s product requests. Charles Aitkin found that 81% of mothers are aware of this fact. Unfortunately, advertisement can lead to negative outcomes such as parent-child conflict, cynicism, obesity, and possible materialistic attitudes. For example, four to six-year-old rely on nagging, crying, and whining to get their parents to buy them products (Calvert, 2008).

            Good news is that some school across the United States has these media literacy trainings to teach kids to understand advertising techniques (Calvert, 2008). I believe that parents can also help their children to understand this issue. Also, parents should be more aware of this problem and do not underestimate the power of marketing persuasive techniques.

Sources

Calvert, S. L. (2008). Children as consumers: Advertising and marketing. The  

Future of Children, 18(1) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com /docview/1519298667?accountid=17238

For Further Research

                There are many web sites, articles, academic journals that you can find online. I chose three web sites that I believe will help you to understands this issue more and it won´t take a lot of time to read them!

http://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers

• On this web site you can find many reliable information in sections such as encouraging and increasing childhood consumerism, heavy advertising targeted at children, advertising to children considered harmful, manipulating children’s views of the world, bans, regulation, self-regulation, media-literacy and more. They are many fragments from academic journals and opinions of experts. Also, it is written is very understandable way so even if you are not native English speaker you should not have difficulties to understand the context.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/ban-advertising-young-children-yes

• If you visit this web site, you will read the article called “Ban all advertising aimed at young children? I say yes.” There are many interesting points and it is really worthy to spend a few minutes to read this article.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep00/advertising.aspx

• I would also recommend to go through article called “Advertising to children: Is it ethical?” that you will find at the link above. This article deal with ethical issues which are related with advertising. Also, you can read opinions of psychologists. 

What the Experts Say II

Food Ads and Children

Article published by Centre for Health Initiatives deals with children obesity. The research shows that children are eating more regularly outside the home, they also eat bigger portions, consume more soft drinks and are eating less fruits and vegetables. Advertising is important factor in children´s eating habits and unfortunately unhealthy food is advertising with further frequency that healthy food. In this research parents said that their children consumptions of candy, chips and chocolate is 2-6 times per week and 1-2 time per week they consume takeaway food.

I assume that this numbers are bigger nowadays, as this study was done in 2010.  It is proved that food advertising affect children. Moreover, the ads are not about the foot itself, but more often about the gifts, toys, products you get when you purchase the food. It is just another marketing strategy of fast-foods companies to attract more children. Moreover, they know children will not come by themselves but of course with parents who are more likely to also order their food.

What can be done to reduce the negative impact of advertising?

Watch these videos to learn more about this topic!

Sources

Jones, S. C., & Kervin, L. (2011). An experimental study on the effects of exposure to magazine advertising on children's food choices. Public Health Nutrition, 14(8), 1337-44. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980010002983

B. (2011). Fighting junk food marketing to kids. Retrieved April, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBj3Fjyr57A

T. (2013). Marketing food to children | Anna Lappe | TEDxManhattan. Retrieved April, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bop3D7-dDM

H. (2015). Food Marketing to Kids - Food Advertising vs Reality. Retrieved April, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHxLcGlHhQ

C. (2013). Junk Food Ads and Kids. Retrieved April, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ahMQwxN9Js

What the Experts Say I

Gender in advertising

In my previous post I already mentioned that advertising, posts in magazines or on the internet use stereotypes which can harm children as they may see these images as realistic portray of their future role in society. If you look at the pictures above, as an adult you know they should not be taken literally or seriously even though they may be offensive to someone. But … What about children? They cannot recognize if message they received is meant to be ironical or joke. We cannot forget they think everything they see or hear is true. What experts think according to this problem?

British Food Journal published article called “Gender in food advertising to children: boys eat first.” According to this article, most of children´s advertisement exhibit stereotypical gender portrayals, where man plays dominant roles. They also find out that commercials use male voice-overs more often than female and that there are more boy actors that girls. Furthermore, girls are never playing with products designed for boys, and they are less frequently shown with products that are non sex-typed such as educational books. During their research they also find out that boys were dominant users in food advertisements. Moreover, food advertisements do not exhibit lower activity level which is surprising because children´s consumption of food is generally not an “active” behavior.

Watch a video to gain better understanding about this topic! 

Sources

D. (2012). A Different Perspective on Gender Roles Within the Media. Retrieved April,  2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d6Q72Gq850

Childs, N. M., & Maher, J. K. (2003). Gender in food advertising to children: Boys    eat first. British Food Journal, 105(6), 408-419. Retrieved                    from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224679133?accountid=17238

Current Events II

Violence and delinquency caused by advertisement

Before reading this post, please, watch the video and think about it for a moment...

             

             Children do not want to be different than their friends, they want to be accepted in their groups and they believe goods or products will provide this. Off course advertising takes advantage of this and they make children think that the product they are selling will make them socially accepted. According to this information, children may also think that if they do not have new mobile phone or the new toy everyone has will make them unpopular among friends. And what children do when they really want something? They will put a lot of pressure on their parents or guardians to buy them the product which can lead to the fact that children become violent to get what they want. I think many of you were witnesses of this kind of children behavior. It can happen in supermarket when children want candy or some snack, also in toyshop when they want this new toy that they saw on TV and all of their friends already have one. When parents refuse to buy these products, children often start to cry and scream, they may even break something or throw off products from the shelfs. In many cases parents do not want to cause troubles in the shop or they just simply feel embarrassed in front of other people so they buy them what they want. 

The real problem here is that it is the worst think they can do, children remember this and next time they will try the same “strategy” to get want they want. Next problem is they children often think they “need” the product. They do not say “I really want this toy”, instead of this they say “I really need this toy”. And that is exactly what advertising does. It transforms wants into needs. This can be very dangerous for them in the future because it is important for children to learn the real values and recognize correctly their emotions.

Unfortunately, today´s kids can be very mean to each other. This is why parents should explain them that it is not important to have the newest things on market to have good friends and also that it is unacceptable to laugh or be mean to others because they do not have something what others can afford. Maybe it is cliché but they should also tell them that every parent or guardian love their kids and would do everything for them, but they cannot buy them everything they want, but it does not mean they do not love them. Maybe this simple explanation is the best one for children?

Sources

Projeto Criança e Consumo. (2009). WHY ADVERTISING IS BAD FOR CHILDREN. Retrieved from http://alana.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/why-advertising-is-bad-for-children.pdf

Current Event I

Advertising harms the healthy development of a child

One of the biggest issue with advertising is that it takes advantage of children naivety. Children simply believe that what they hear and see is true. According to this fact, they also believe that the product that is advertised is exactly the same as presented in TV and will provide the same pleasure or evoke feeling of excitement. Even though advertising exaggerate things and teens or adults are aware of this, little children cannot recognize that something is unrealistic. Adults do not believe that sport shoes will make them more fit without exercising, but children may think that when they eat some kind of cereals every day, they will be healthier, fit or look like some superhero.

How children see the advertising? 0-2 years old child notice just TV images; 2-5 years old kids understand TV literally. Furthermore, child who is around 4 years old does not realize that some cartoon finished and the another program or commercial started. 5-8 years old children begin to develop strategies to manipulate their parents. Only children older than 12 years old understand the persuasive character of advertising. Marketing people realize these facts and they are not afraid to use them in their interest.

How big damage advertising can cause? First of all, children are becoming less creative which goes hand in hand with imagination. Also, advertising induces passivity which can be very harmful to children in any age because by playing children develop language, social skills, explore the world around them and learn how to express their feeling. Furthermore, ads increase marketing segmentation by genders, link the concept of happiness with the habit of consumption, indicates how one should looks like or what one should have to be socially accepted.  Children depend on a good example to form their character and I am not sure that TV can provide it.

Sources 

Projeto Criança e Consumo. (2009). WHY ADVERTISING IS BAD FOR CHILDREN. Retrieved from http://alana.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/why-advertising-is-bad-for-children.pdf

Children as Consumer

The market for children’s products and food is enormous and can be also very dangerous. It is easy to influence children and parents should be aware of the fact that it is not only the school environment, friends, family who does this but also TV and magazines. They use colorful, animated, funny ads to accomplish this. Those ads are not focusing on how good or bad quality the product is but on how this product will change the life of children when they will buys it.

 

What this blog is about? 

• types of ads that are influencing or targeting young audience
•  effects of those ads
•  why companies aim to target such a young audience
•  what can be done about it 

Advertising on children is big business (Shah,2010):

• $15-17 billion is spent by companies advertising to children in the US. Over $4 billion was spent in 2009 by the fast food industry alone.
• Teens in the US spend around $160 billion a year
• Children (up to 11) spend around $18 billion a year
• Children (under 12) and teens influence parental purchases totaling over $130-670 billion a year

Sources 

Shah, A. (2010, November 21). Children as Consumers. Retrieved April 20, 2016,         from http://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers# Advertising tochildrenisbigbusiness