Rethinking Childhood

Chapter 8: Advertising and Marketing to Children in the United States

Advertising and Marketing to Children 141 141 Advertising and Marketing to Children in the United States Chapter 8 ENOLA G. AIRD RADIO, TELEVISION, WEBSITES, video games, toys, music videos, computer games, clothing, magazines, billboards, ads on neighborhood streets, at bus stops, in buses, in classrooms, in community centers, in malls, in doctors’ offices, at supermarket checkouts, in elevators, in movie theaters, in airports, at ATM machines , and more. At home, at school, at play, and at work, children today march through their lives to a steady drumbeat of advertising and marketing. From the moment they wake up in the morning until the minute they lay their heads on their pillows at night, most children in the United States are exposed, through a wide variety of media, to a stream of marketing messages urging on them an ever-growing number of products and services produced by business entities that include the largest corporate conglomerates and that together constitute the largest consumer economy in the world. Since the early 1980s, children have become a major target for businesses seeking to maximize the sales of their goods and services. In the words of James McNeal, a leading authority on the children’s market, children “represent more market potential than any other demographic segment” (1999, 17). They have increasing amounts of disposable income. They exert a growing influence over the purchasing decisions of their parents. And if they are, in McNeal’s words, “nurtured as future consumers” (17), they can be a source of a lifetime of sales for aggressive corporations and advertising and marketing agencies. 142 ENOLA G. AIRD To tap into the lucrative markets of children and youth, a growing number of advertisers and marketers are using the tools of psychology and other behavioral sciences to understand children’s emotional vulnerabilities and to craft their campaigns to maximum effect. They are exploiting advertising and marketing opportunities nearly everywhere children can be found and employing every available media technology. The basic strategy for many advertisers today is to grow consumers from childhood. As one marketing executive has described it, “All these people understand something that is very basic and logical, that if you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to come. . . . Companies are saying , ‘Hey, I want to own the kid younger and younger and younger’” (Michael Searles, cited in Harris 1989, A1). This chapter examines a major commonality for children in the United States today: the increasing commercialization of childhood. It identifies a number of the advertising and marketing practices designed to grow consumers from childhood and explores some of the effects of these practices on children’s lives. It considers what the pressure to consume is doing to children in our society and how today’s brand of consumerism might be affecting the development of children’s agency and voice, which Richard Unsworth and Peter Pufall describe in the Introduction as their ability to help shape their world and to articulate their hopes, wishes, and fulfillments. Agency and Voice Children are born with great curiosity and a fundamental drive to explore, make sense of, and master their environment. Children’s drive to find out, capacity to figure things out, and need for mastery are “facilitated by the extent to which their environments provide opportunities and supports for growth” (Shonkoff and Phillips 2000, 27). Children are thus active participants in their own development throughout childhood. They are agents in the sense that as they explore , they construct a set of beliefs and values in regard to themselves and the world around them, and they act on those beliefs and values. As they acquire the skills of language, they also develop the ability to communicate, to tell their stories, to give voice to their own beliefs and values instead of simply accepting those imposed on them by others. The focus in this book on children’s agency and voice is, at bottom, animated by a respect for the dignity and integrity of children as persons. This point of view recognizes every child’s need and right, at every age and at all stages of development, to be given room to learn, make sense of the world, grow, and become. It also recognizes the responsibility of mothers, fathers, and other adults Advertising and Marketing to Children 143 to build the kinds of relationships with children and create the kinds of conditions that facilitate their...