Myth Of Advertising: Tricking The Youth

In today’s market driven society children can’t escape ads and their marketers, even their schools are filled with the advertiser’s products distracting the youth from learning.

No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products.

A website, Journal of Mass Communication, states that, “63% have their own television set.” This is talking about 7-year-olds and how 63% of them have television sets. Children at the age of 7 are being affected by these advertisements. Also, the Journal of Mass Communication says that, “A young child who is as young as three year can’t understand the selling motive of the advertiser it is not until 8 years of age…” This shows at a young age that children are becoming a target for the advertising companies. When these kids watch these ads they want to have whatever they see which makes them want to have a high social

In the essay “Kid Kustomers” by Eric Schlosser, the author addresses how companies use advertising as a way to lure children into buying their products. The author eventually convinces the reader that children then influence their parents into buying the product as well. Schlosser incorporates statistics about how much McDonald's sold their happy meals to children between the age of three and nine. This is simply because children watch more tv and go on the internet more; therefore, they are more likely to see more advertising, and eventually pursue their parents to buy them the product. In an informative tone, the author is speaking to parents with young

Maya NinoDrucker English 5 11 November 2014Prompt #1Effects of Advertising on WomenAdvertisements of today are overwhelmingly sexual with undertones of hostility and degradation towards women. It does not matter whether the advertisement is directed at men or women, boys or girls. It may be overt or it may be subtle, but there seems to always be an underlying theme of pervasive sexuality and enmity. The mental, emotional, and social impact ofthese advertisements may be adversely affecting our young girls and women of today. The effects of advertising have gone beyond persuading women to just buy products. “These media messages link thinness with love and happiness, often solely in terms of having the right body to attract the opposite sex” (Hesse-Biber 770). Women and girls of all ages are buying into an idea that is detrimental to their self worth, personal identity, and physical and mental health. Women would not be buying into these ideas if it were not for the men perpetuating them and forcing these stereotypes and unrealistic ideals onto women. Females in our society are gleaning idealistic and harmful aspirations from the advertisements that are bombarding our media-based culture; however, the teaching of media literacy through education may help to raise awareness in order to diminish the damaging effects on the women and girls of today.Results of a study done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggest, “that watching even 30 minutes’ worth of

In her article “Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool” Schor discusses the techniques used by ad makers to manipulate children. She points out that marketers look at consumers to understand what is cool for youth—by tapping hip-hop and rap culture—and the reverse, creating a feedback loop. Also, Schor argues that cool is usually associated with an antiadult sensibility, and thus ads portray children with a blatant adverse attitude towards authority, such as parents and teachers by promoting an antisocial and mischievous behavior. Furthermore, ads are targeting kids using products and messages initially conceived for an older audience—strategy knows as age compression. A perfect example of this new trend is the Victoria’s Secret “Bright

Advertisers trick kids pretty easily. According to the article is advertizing harmful to kids, the harm lies in the persuasive techniques advertisers use to influence kids. Kids are impressionable, and marketing take advantage of sophisticated devices-- demographic data, psychology, developmental characteristics, and behavior traits -- to determine the most effective ways to influence them. It is not good that

Kids are bombarded with commercials daily; their favorite shows declare their sponsors and kids become interested, thinking if their favorite show is associated with the brand, the product is surely as great as the show. Their favorite game apps show ads before beginning the actual gameplay, and kids.

At the current time advertising can be represented in many ways - as a business, a fundamental ingredient of entrepreneurship or as an alternative way of communicating (William F. 2004). Originating from ancient times, its main purpose is to sell a product. William F. (2004, 6) claims that “every consumer is exposed to hundreds or even thousands of advertisements every day”. We view advertisements everywhere: on TV, banners, Web-sites, in magazines, newspapers, on sport events or even printed on tea cups, and all this is done with an aim to attract our attention. However, there are some advertisements which are targeted on a particular group of people, depending on age, sex, interests or even religion. These advertisements are defined as

Younger children do not understand the persuasive intent of advertisements, while adolescents have a hard time distinguishing the intent of marketing techniques between commercial and program content. Using research that analyzes children behavior, marketers are able to create convincing strategies to reach young people. One powerful tactic they use is the promise of a toy with your meal. McDonald’s Happy Meals, for example, include toys usually tied to the newest movie or TV shows, which acts as a transition for children to transfer their feelings about the characters or show towards McDonald’s. The idea that eating should be fun influences children in regards to their food choices. Another strategy used

There is a method to advertising and the agencies have an understanding that children have a particular pattern for what is known as their peak viewing hours. Studies have shown that children have the tendency to watch television more often on Saturday mornings and evenings, as well as Sunday evenings. It was noted by Zimmerman and Bell (2010) that during the weekends, children were more likely to view unhealthy food commercials “every 5 minutes” (p. 4). So during these days, this would be the ideal time for advertisers to target kids.

Professor Jeff Richards once said “Creative without strategy is called art, but creative with strategy is called advertising.” This quote is basically stating that advertisements use a lot of techniques and strategies to convince and persuade audience. Particularly advertisements use psychological feelings to persuade you positively or negatively towards a product. Advertising affects youth’s psychology by triggering feelings that make you want to buy their product.

Children spend numerous amount of time watching television, playing videogames, and using computers. For businesses, these children represent the ultimate prize, an unprecedented, powerful, and elusive new demographic to profit from. Their goals now are to insinuate their brands into these children’s lives and marketers have begun to place products directly into children entertainment by subtle “product placement”. Product placement which is the significant placement of product within movies or television programs (O'Quinn, Thomas C; Allen, Chris D; Semenik, Richard J, 2009). According to the text, advertiser love the exposure that product placement provides because many consumers have turned to solutions that avoids traditional advertising, with technology like the TiVo, the consumer can skip commercials. Competition can be intense and businesses go to ethically questionable extreme ways of pushing goods, services, and beliefs.

The techniques and methods used to advertise to the youth, convincing the kids that there isn’t a bad side to products and foods being advertised. The advertisers twist the truth to try to influence the youth, they use many different objects to help draw the youth in. “Marketing and Advertising” shows that not only do advertising corrupt the youth, they also make them make unhealthy decisions. The advertisers success is mind-boggling; advertisers use little things like glowing effects and it immediately attracts kids like wildfire. The manipulation of the youths minds due to advertisements are unreal but the kids end up making bad decisions due to the excessive amount of ads. Kids are never going to be able to make decisions that are honest and deeply

Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to