Advertising diatribe

[Holly Lisle]

On 14 May 99, at 17:37, goldenshrine@juno.com wrote:

> <<<<But the fact remains that TV advertising is targeting younger kids
> all the
> time. TV is *not* a teaching tool, even with "educational" children's
> programs. It lacks the required feedback loops, an so teaches children to
> blindly accept what they see.>>>>
> 
> <<<<<an so teaches children to blindly accept what they see.>>>>>
> 
> Wrong!! Try: if your kids are extremely STUPID. 

I disagree, Van.  Advertisers aren't targeting stupid people.  They 
are targeting _people_, and they are extremely good at what they do 
sometimes.  If they couldn't deliver customers to their clients, 
advertising would not be the multi-billion dollar industry that it is.  Do 
you think only stupid people have developed a brand-name 
preference for Coke or Pepsi, or buy Levis instead of Wranglers?  

To fine-tune this discussion further, the advertising we were 
discussing was advertising aimed at small children and infants.  
Small children are not stupid, but they are vulnerable, because they 
do not have the life experience or the developed comprehension to 
place what they are seeing in logical context, or to discern truth from 
sophisticated lies.   

> If they are little or young you should be there with them, while they are
> watching the show. If you can't, at least encourage the child to talk
> about what he/she has seen and involve them in a conversation about it.
 
I agree with this for older children, but the kids under discussion 
were, if I'm recalling the article correctly, in the 6 mo.-5 year range.  
Through much of that range, children have _very_ limited verbal 
skills.  Try to imagine talking to an eighteen-month-old about what he 
has seen on television and which parts of it are real.  (I have one of 
those right now, so I can be specific and correct about his level of 
verbal communication).  I could no more explain to Joe that Nike is 
just a brand-name for foot coverings and not the mystical gateway to 
athletic prowess than I could get him to see that the kids playing with 
the plastic toy on the Nickelodeon ad were pretending to have fun 
because their parents were paid to put them in the ad.  Joe is a 
terrifically bright kid, but his current vocabulary, including both the 
words he speaks and those he appears to understand, is at around 
a hundred words.  At the moment it doesn't seem to include any 
abstract concepts whatsoever.

Yet advertisers have discovered they can target Joe, 
aiming him toward consumption of their products.


> While I agree TV can be a bad thing, it is all in the context.

I'm not sure that I agree with this, either.  Harald's second article 
reminded me of things that I'd read before about television's .effect 
on brainwaves --  I'm not willing to concede at this point that 
anything that can alter brainwaves is bad only in context.

> And thinking your children have no power to make up their minds about
> what they believe or not....

Harald's child, like my youngest, is very young.  Young enough to 
be deeply susceptible to television programming and too young to 
for Harald to counteract all of its effects with nothing more than logic 
and discussion.  To a little kid, if other little kids are having a good 
time playing with something on the t.v. screen, that thing must be 
fun.  After all, they can _see_ it.  They can see little guys just like 
them laughing their heads off while playing with it.  Therefore, it 
_must_ be true.

Holly
         Holly Lisle -- never give up on your dreams
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