Advertising diatribe

[C. Harald Koch]

>From another mailing list I'm on, the Center for a New American Dream's
conversation list. It's a great list they have monthly conversations on a wide
range of topics, all centered around a return to a simpler life, and
harmonious living. 

This month's topic is "Growing Up In a Material World: Kids, Commercialism and
Consumption". This message caught my eye as being interesting to (at least
some) members of Lisle's Lunatic League.

[ Tell me and I'll stop forwarding stuff like this; I find it interesting, but
you may not >:]

Message-ID: <F192E02B5CFED2119CF000A0C99E02C602AA30@SERVER>
From: Anna White <inbalance@newdream.org>
To: "'conversation@newdream.org'" <conversation@newdream.org>
Subject: The disturbing truth, in industry reps' own words--Katie Milligan
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 12:42:47 -0400
Organization: Center for a New American Dream

From: Katie Milligan <newdream4@newdream.org>


As part of the Center's Kids & Commercialism project team, I have been 
conducting research and interviews on this month's listserv discussion 
topic for several months now. I thoroughly enjoyed Linda's opening piece 
and I am glad that the conversation is off to such a productive start. I do 
have to wonder what knowledge base Eric Arnold speaks from when he attempts 
to discredit Linda's piece as "removed from reality," however. If anything, 
my research has led me to wonder if perhaps her statements are not alarmist 
enough.  Let me share some of the pertinent findings - bear with my 
loquacious posting, please.

First of all, no one is asserting that Americans (or, more relevant to this 
month's topic, children) are "dupes." Young children, however, simply do 
not possess the skills to screen commercials for the accuracy and 
truthfulness of their promises, and thus are vulnerable to suggestive 
imagery and misleading (often implicit) claims in ads. Study after study 
has confirmed that most young children have trouble distinguishing when TV 
programs end and the commercials begin; indeed, the majority of young kids 
do not even understand the purpose of a commercial is to sell something. 
Even benign advertising techniques, like using the endorsement of a 
celebrity or a cartoon character, is often exploitative of children's 
naivete. One study of four- to seven-year-olds found that after viewing a 
commercial for Cocoa Pebbles cereal featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney 
Rubble, the children wanted the cereal because it "had a chocolate taste, 
it would make them smile, and Fred and Barney recommended it." An entire 
third of the children believed the cartoon characters were recommending the 
cereal because they were nutritional experts. The fact is, the ad industry 
knows this about young kids all too well. "Kids are the most pure consumers 
you could have," once said Debra McMahon, a vice-president for Mercer 
Management Consulting. "They tend to interpret your ad literally. They are 
infinitely open."

Although some products brought to the kids' market every year might fail, 
as Eric points out, the sheer number of them is practically rising 
exponentially. Not only are companies greatly expanding and perpetually 
updating their kids' product lines, but whole industries are turning on to 
the kids' market. As recently as a decade ago, only 1/3 of major retail 
chains made an effort to target kids; now that figure is almost 2/3 and 
increasing. Everyone from banks to soap is coming out with a "kid's 
version" in order to familiarize children with their brand name - to 
improve the 'success rate' of the nag factor in the short run, and increase 
their odds of retaining life-long loyal customers in the long run. Says 
James McNeal, an expert on marketing to children, "A company can virtually 
guarantee itself customers tomorrow if it invests in them as children? With 
relatively small expenditures?firms can build their brand names among 
today's youth, making their companies acceptable and desirable 
tomorrow...The marketers' motto will be, 'If you don't have a kid's 
product, get one.'"

In advertising circles, this technique is literally called cradle-to-grave 
marketing. And the industry really is heading to the cradle. Kidscreen, a 
magazine about "reaching children through entertainment," reports on ad 
agencies toying with the idea of hooking infants on their brand name: 
"Agencies are cautiously eyeing the zero-to-three [year-old] demographic, a 
group that poses tremendous challenges and opportunities because research 
has indicated that children are capable of understanding brands at very 
young ages." (They are informed - you gotta give them that. Research 
indicates that babies start forming mental images of mascots and logos at 
six months, the same age they learn to say "ma-ma." By the time they are 
three, most American children start making brand name requests.)

Advertising expenditures are rising right alongside product lines; targeted 
advertising in kid-specific media jumped more than 50% between 1993 and 
1996 alone. To get the biggest bang for their advertising buck, 
corporations are heavily funding studies of children's behavior and 
psychological needs. In his book Out of the Garden: Toys and Children's 
Culture in the Age of TV Marketing, Professor Stephen Kline reveals that 
some of the most significant advances in child psychology have been made by 
marketing researchers. Yet the people who are professionally dedicated to 
fostering the well-being of children - developmental psychologists, 
psychiatrists, family therapists, etc. - cannot view the proprietary data 
for "reasons of competitive advantage."  Moreover, these same professionals 
rarely have access to anything resembling the funds Mattel spends on market 
research to conduct studies of their own. "So, in fact, some very important 
observations about the fate of childhood in the increasingly globalized 
consumer culture are simply not open to examination and debate," says 
Kline.

True, kids are a finicky market. It's hard to predict what will succeed 
with them, and that's why an entire marketing field is burgeoning to take 
all the guesswork out of it. Articles on "Getting Inside Kids' Heads," 
books like "What Kids Buy & Why," "Selling to Kids" and "Kidscreen" 
newsletters, expensive software packages, and entire firms are springing 
up, and they're going directly to kids. Education Market Resources, for 
instance, conducts focus groups and Internet panels on pre-school to 
college-age kids during school hours. They're already in more than 1,000 
schools across the country. Channel One has been called a "marketer's 
secret weapon" by its own Vice-President of Sales (don't even get me 
started on Channel One). Firms that design corporate-funded educational 
materials market their services as a way for corporations to reach kids 
'where they work.' One brochure to potential corporate clients says, 
"IMAGINE millions of students discussing your product in class. IMAGINE 
teachers presenting your organization's point of view." Telephone surveys 
and cyber chats are increasingly seen as valuable research tools, because 
young children openly provide personal and demographic information without 
parental knowledge. Observational research is also commonly used. In a 
recent American Demographics article: "By observing and recording behavior 
in the same way anthropologists do, researchers can unearth nuggets in a 
child's subconscious response?These insights can go a long way toward 
developing messages kids will hear and products they'll buy."

What about these messages that marketers send to children? Are they 
beneficial to children's development and welfare? Linda mentions how 
corporations now teach children to seek a product resolution for personal 
and developmental needs. Ads that encourage kids to buy status labels as a 
way to satisfy their developmental needs of social acceptance and peer 
approval seems like an obvious example. Former ad agency president Nancy 
Shalek makes this point for me. She once said, "Advertising at its best is 
making people feel that without their product, you're a loser. Kids are 
very sensitive to that. If you tell them to buy something, they are 
resistant. But if you tell them they'll be a dork if they don't, you've got 
their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities and it's very easy 
to do with kids because they're the most emotionally vulnerable."

Beyond conveying any one message or selling any one product, though, 
commercialism achieves something much bigger, as Linda indicated. The 
commercial barrage aimed at kids sells the idea that nonmaterial needs can 
be met materially. That identity is sought through the endless accumulation 
of stuff. In essence, commercialism sells the worldview of consumerism. 
(For a wonderful passage on this by Brian Swimme, see 
http://www.newdream.org/newsletter/swimme.html.)