Advertising to Children

I recently had to write a paper for my media law and ethics class. We had to choose a topic that in our opinion was an ethical issue in the media. I chose advertising and targeting children in the media. I am posting this because the information I found was astounding and although I know the media affects children, I never realized that there are specific companies targeting children because they know how vulnerable they are. I initially chose the topic because I had heard about Mattel creating a Shopping Barbie. This particular barbie came with a register and a MasterCard to swipe all her purchases, I think this is horrible because it teaches children while they are developing their perception and opinions of the world that it is right to take your MasterCard (the specific brand and logo on the card) to spend money. They associate barbie, a toy that they love with MasterCard. It is very clever of MasterCard...

I know everyone would agree that media and advertising in some ways influences us as adults, I mean I would be lying if I said that seeing a beautiful woman who is thin on TV does not make me a little jealous, or make me a little more critical on my own body and appearance. This is not the only area that the media and advertisers are targeting children now, they have developed advertising plans completely targeting children from 2 years old to middle school age. Advertisers target children indirectly with food advertisements, soda ads, movie ads and even cigarette ads which really shocked me. In my research I found that cigarette advertisers place ads in magazines where they know children and teens will see even though the actual magazine is not intended for children and teens. The advertisers are very intelligent, they have methods of tracking circulation and readership so they are able to identify their audiences and age groups, interests ect, by doing this they can find out how many children read a specific magazine that is intended for their older siblings (for example) and place cigarette ads in them.. Another shocking piece of information I found was that advertisers are teaming up with child psychologists now to find out what areas children are the most vulnerable in, what they are interested in and what celebrities they are the most interested in so that they can use those celebrities to promote certain products that children will be drawn to even though they are not old enough for the product or won't be able to purchase the product until they are older. The goal is to draw them in while they are young and make a product appealing so that when the child is older, they will immediately be drawn to the initial brand they were introduced to, this is called brand loyalty. Marketers trying to create brand loyalty is all over the place, I could go on and on about this but I am going to leave you with a few things I found and you can decide for yourself how you feel.

-James McNEal, Author of a book on Marketing to Kids said “Brand Marketing must begin with children. Even if a child does not buy the product and will not for many years…the marketing must begin in childhood.”

-USA Today printed this article, a "how to"-6 marketing strategies for marketing to children
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2006-11-21-toy-strategies-usat_x.htm

-According to the American Psychological Association, children lack the cognitive skills and abilities of adults and do not critically comprehend advertisements the same way adults do, children tend to believe advertisements are truthful and accurate.

-In 2007, according to the APA $2 billion was spent on advertising to children

There was so much more info, so I suggest looking into it more- and being careful what kids around you are exposed to, I didn't even touch on the studys focusing on the results of the media on children!