"I feel television has died. It's such a make-the-doughnuts mentality. It's about finding 48 minutes of material so you can have 12 minutes of good commercials. If they thought they could get good commercials out of 10 people being naked and spinning on their heads in the middle of an island, that's what they'll do."
- Hill Harper (City of Angels) in TV Guide Online
"Watching TV thus creates something of treadmill... television viewing plays a key role in crowding-out social activities with solitary ones... television can play a significant role in raising people's materialism and material aspirations, thus leading individuals to underestimate the relative importance of interpersonal relations for their life satisfaction and, as a consequence, to over-invest in income-producting activities and under-invest in relational activities..."
- Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirkey (page 8)
The Purpose of TV
"Cable aside, the television industry is not in the business of selling programs to audiences. It is in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. Issues of "quality" and "social responsibility" are entirely peripheral to the issue of maximizing audience size within a competitive market."
There are many ways to talk about television. But in a "Business" perspective, let's be realistic : basicaly, TF1's job is to help Coca-Cola sell its product, for instance. To make the advertising message well received, the audience's brain must be available. Our shows are here to make the brain available, to entertain it, to relax it, to prepare it between two messages. What we're selling to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Nothing is as difficult as getting this availability. ~ Patrick Le Lay, CEO of TF1, the main french TV-channel
Extremely strong brands - MTV, VH1, Paramount, Nickelodeon and E! - that allow us a fantastic relationship with those 'hard-to-reach' audiences. Our working mantra is: insight, ideas, partnership. We focus on advertising effectiveness, which means we care about results. How important is programming to children within this? Strong programming is essential in delivering the audience and representing the brand values.
"This is significant when we consider that the most essential product of the advertising industry is hunger. That is, commercials are intended to create a feeling of lack in the viewer, a deep ache that can only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communications Arts at New York University, points out, “What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.” So we hand our children over to Madison Avenue to be told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular they are and will continue to be until they spend (or persuade their parents to spend) a few more dollars. And then we wonder why our children feel so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and why they are so needy."
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Consumerism
"Watch not, want not? Kids' TV time tied to consumerism" - Stanford Report (April 2006)
"Juliet Schor, a leading scholar on the culture of consumerism in the U.S., recently said that we have reached a critical point in our culture: The average American woman now buys more than 52 items of new clothing each year — more than one per week. Of course, women don’t need that many new clothes, yet they buy them anyway. Why? Well, much to our chagrin, most of us have been brainwashed by our consumer culture to over-consume. Worse, over time this hyper-consumption has become part of our identities. Our values, attitudes, habits, and practices reflect this culture of addiction." - Get Rich Slowly (June 2001)
"Dr. Schor from Harvard University wrote the book The Overspent American which provides some marvelous insights on television watching. She conducted a large-scale study of American spending and saving habits and correlated the results with other lifestyle factors. She concluded that for every hour of television a person watches per week, the average American spends $200. Sitting in front of the television five extra hours a week (two sitcoms a night) raises your yearly spending by about $1000. Indebtedness as an outgrowth of TV watching arises not so much from viewers repeated exposure to advertising, but from their attempts to emulate the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by fictional characters in soap operas and prime-time television dramas. The more television people watch the more they tend to believe that ordinary citizens have servants, limousines, and huge houses. - Mercola (Jan 2008)
"And as the advertising industry increasingly aims commercial pitches directly at the very young, more and more companies are turning to child psychologists to help them hone their message."
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Does Television Make Us More Materialistic?
"The real concerns of yesterday's poor have become the imagined concerns of today's rich," said Dr Hamilton. "This 'deprivation syndrome' induces politicians to distort policy to reduce the burden of taxation and increase public payments to wealthy households."
Buying Happiness: The Depressing Reality of Materialism
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Using Psychology to Sell
"Advertising and marketing firms have long used the insights and research methods of psychology in order to sell products, of course. But today these practices are reaching epidemic levels, and with a complicity on the part of the psychological profession that exceeds that of the past. The result is an enormous advertising and marketing onslaught that comprises, arguably, the largest single psychological project ever undertaken. Yet, this great undertaking remains largely ignored by the American Psychological Association."
Advertising and Free Will
The Century of the Self - "The business and, increasingly, the political world uses psychological techniques to read and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population. He cites Paul Mazer, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930s: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs.""
Freud's Nephew and Public Relations
"They noted that since memory was fallible and malleable, advertisers could win back consumers who thought they'd had bad experiences with their products. From the advertiser's standpoint, they wrote, "you want the consumer to be involved enough that they process the false information" but "not so involved that … they notice the discrepancy between the advertising information and their own experience."" - Slate (May 2010)
"Can nostalgic advertising re-write your childhood memories?" - Psychology Today Blog (July 2011)
"Since the Langer study, an enormous amount of research has looked at when and why people are persuaded by weak arguments just as easily as by strong ones, much of this work being led by John Cacioppo and Richard Petty. It turns out that the circumstances under which people are the least sensitive to the quality of an argument are the same situations in which they are most likely to be swayed by very superficial cues such as the attractiveness of a speaker, his or her reputation, or even how many arguments are made—regardless of their content. It seems, then, that where inattentiveness closes one door to persuasion, it opens another." - Psychology Today Blog (July 2011)
 "Why are our desires and choices so easily shaped by marketing?" - Psychology Today Blog (Aug 2012)
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Neuromarketing
There has not been nearly enough studies on the effects of television (the medium) on the brain. The exception to this is the Advertising Industry which has done quite a bit of research on the effects of TV advertising using MRI and EEG machines. They know that TV advertising, unlike print advertising bypasses our critical faculties and go directly to our emotions.
"Inside a lab at a company called NeuroFocus, test subjects are having their eye movements and brainwaves measured as they watch commercials to see what they respond to at a subconscious level." - ABC News (Feb 2011)
"In early August, the British magazine New Scientist published a cover that had scored well on a test conducted by neuromarketers, who study the brain’s response to products. But the question remained: would that good review translate to sales on the newsstand? The short answer is yes." - The New York Times (Sept 2010)
"U.S. advertisers spent nearly $500 per American last year. But what makes one ad persuasive and another a dud? Two Bay Area firms have adapted brain scanning technology to gain insight into the science of spending." - San Francisco Chronicle (May 2008)
"NEVER mind brainstorms. These days, Madison Avenue is all about brain waves. That may be overstated, but it is no exaggeration that agencies and advertisers are growing more interested in neuroscience in their never-ending efforts to improve effectiveness." - The New York Times (March 2008)
"The Nielsen Co. is to announce today a strategic investment in and alliance with NeuroFocus, which specializes in the practice of measuring brain waves to determine consumers’ responses to marketing messages." - Commercial Alert (Feb 2008)
"Brain scans are helping advertisers find out how to light up customers' brains, reports Paul Bray" - The Telegraph (Jan 2007)
"Marketers may have your number, neurologically speaking: A new study finds that familiar brands evoke faster, more positive responses in the brain than lesser-known brands." - Washington Post (Nov 2006)
"Who Really Won The Super Bowl?" - Edge (2006)
"By taking neuromarketing out of the lab and into the mall, a small British firm is helping world-class advertisers make their pitches more effective." - CNN Money (Aug 2005)
"What is going on inside our heads when we make such decisions? Marketers would certainly like to know. With modern neurotechnology, they are beginning to find out." - Scientific American (May 2005)
"Last year he decided to repeat the Pepsi Challenge, but scan the activity of the brain at the same time. Using a non-invasive technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the scans reveal which parts of the brain are active in real time." - Brand Channel (March 2004)
"There's a Sucker Born in Every Medial Prefrontal Cortex" - The New York Times (Oct 2003)
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Priming
"Unintended consequences? Food ads automatically prime eating in children and adults" - Media and Public (Feb 2010)
"The sneaky and unconscious part is that people were not aware that the ads had influenced them. When the adults were asked why they were eating, they typically reported they were just hungry. As with Bargh's other research, people were not aware that their behaviors had been primed by their recent experiences. People were eating without awareness that the ads were causing them to eat. One possible mechanism is that the pleasure associated with eating presented in the ads primed eating behaviors in general. Thus even if people do not remember which products were advertised, the ads will affect their behavior. In my previous blog, I argued that beer ads are often a failure because people can't remember which brand of beer was advertised (or at least I can't, see Beer, Humor, and Memory). But what if that isn't the goal? What if the goal is sneakier? What if the goal is simply more beer consumption? In that case, the ad may be effective. People watching those ads may drink more. Junk food and beer ads may increase consumption. The particular product then gets its regular share of that additional consumption. The ad may be effective even when not remembered." - Psychology Today Blog (Aug 2010)
The Subconscious Brain - Who’s Minding the Mind?
"Prompts in the environment make their way beneath your conscious radar and into your mind, affecting your mood and behaviour. Past research has shown that a briefcase, as opposed to a rucksack, on a table, leads people to behave more competitively. A wall poster featuring a pair of staring eyes increases people's use of an honesty box. And a 2009 study found that pictures of companionable dolls increased the likelihood that toddlers would help a stranger pick up sticks they'd dropped. Now Mark Rubin at the University of Newcastle has added to this literature with an adult study showing that pictures of companionship don't just increase the giving of help, they also increase the intention to seek help." - BP Research (July 2011)
"In a series of studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Karl Aquino, Marjorie Laven, and I we show that people exposed to acts of uncommon goodness or virtue were significantly more likely to behave in prosocial ways." - Psychology Today Blog (April 2011)
"Scanlon and Polage created a few picture ads and asked students for their opinions. Participants saw both a genuinely smiling model (i.e., a Duchenne smile which is “the true smile” because people cannot fake it) and a model without a Duchenne smile. So does the type of smile matter in an ad? Yes! When the model displayed a Duchenne smile, the participants were more willing to buy, and pay higher prices for, that product. Moreover, these results were consistent for both expensive (e.g. a laptop) and inexpensive (e.g. a sandwich) products. The researchers concluded that seeing an ad where the model had a Duchenne smile primed people with a positive emotional response, which leaked over to the product." - Psychology Today (Aug 2012)
"We are constantly bombarded with messages that prompt us to think like “consumers” rather than as people. This subtle “priming” happens all the time, and that study demonstrated that fostering a consumer mentality has real, and unfortunate, consequences for how we think and behave." - Psychology Today (April 2012)
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Subliminal Advertising
"Putting all this together, then, subliminal advertising can have some effects on your choices, though it will not turn you into a robot. First, subliminal ads only have an effect if you are already motivated to pursue a goal. So, the subliminal ad will not make you do something you don't want to do. Second, subliminal ads have their strongest effect when they make it easier for you to think about something that is not normally your habit." - Psychology Today Blog (May 2011)
"Apparently, I'm not the only one who wondered. In 2008, psychologists Joel Weinberger and Drew Westen carried out their own experimental RATS campaign, and found that subliminally flashing RATS (as opposed to a word like STAR, or symbols like XXXX) before showing study volunteers a photo of a fictional political candidate caused them to report a more negative impression of that candidate." - Psychology Today Blog (Jan 2011)
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Affective Conditioning
"However, ads also do other things. One thing they do is to take a product and to put it next to lots of other things that we already feel positively about. For example, an ad for detergent may have fresh flowers, cute babies, and sunshine in it. All of these things are ones that we probably feel pretty good about already. And repeatedly showing the detergent along with other things that we feel good about can make us feel good about the detergent, too. This transfer of our feelings from one set of items to another is called affective conditioning (the word affect means feelings)."
"The people who went through the affective conditioning procedure picked the pen that was paired with positive items 70-80% of the time. They chose this pen, even though they had information that the other pen was better. Over the two studies in this paper, the authors found that people chose the pen that was paired with positive objects even when people were given as much time as they wanted to make a choice, and even when the instructions specifically encouraged them to pick the best choice and to say why they were choosing a particular pen."
"These results suggest that the most powerful effect of advertising is just to create a good feeling about a product by surrounding it with other things that you like. It is also important to point out that affective conditioning is most effective when you don't realize that it is happening. That is, trying to pay less attention to the ads you see on TV and in magazines may actually make this type of advertising more effective."
- Psychology Today Blog (Aug 2010)
"For some of us, the increasingly popular practice of celebrity product endorsements is puzzling. What difference does it make if Brad Pitt recommends a particular pen, or Sally Field a certain cereal? Unless the famous spokesperson has a specific area of expertise — say, Tiger Woods endorsing a set of golf clubs — why would anyone care? A new study suggests the answer involves superstar-specific happy memories stored in our cerebral cortex. Using brain-scan technology, researchers found those positive emotions get transferred from the personality to the product, producing a more positive impression of the item in question and, presumably, a greater probability of purchasing it." - Alternet (June 2010)
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It's not just TV commercials that effect our behavior, but also the shows themselves.
Yet more interesting than the overwhelming volume of viewers was the effect the show had on the audience
"These dramas capitalize on psychologists' knowledge of the powerful--and sometimes scary--influences television can have on children and adults."
"The most common (and pervasive) examples of social learning situations are television commercials. Commercials suggest that drinking a certain beverage or using a particular hair shampoo will make us popular and win the admiration of attractive people. Depending upon the component processes involved (such as attention or motivation), we may model the behavior shown in the commercial and buy the product being advertised. "
Reese's Pieces And E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
"REALITY TV shows are fuelling Britain's record-breaking £50 billion-a-year gambling habit."
Social Norms Marketing
"The authors placed pictures in cafeteria lunch trays. The photo showed veggies in one of the lunch plate compartments, suggesting that other students typically placed vegetables in that compartment. The results? Children put more veggies on their plates. The cost? About $12 and two hours of time, for 600 children.
Why was this so effective? Social psychology has long shown the power of social norms. We often do what others are doing, and conforming (or fitting in) is a goal especially powerful to children. If everyone starts listening to a certain band, many will follow. Of course, if smoking or underage drinking becomes common, it is hard to stop youth from doing that too. In this case, the mere illusion that vegetable choice is common among their peers increased the likelihood of including a veggie as a part of their lunch." - Psychology Today (Feb 2012)
"This research consistently shows that fiction does mold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape." - Boston.com (April 2012)
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Product Placement / Branded Entertainment
"In a move that has shaken the Twitterverse, Daniel Craig is set to star as Bond in a new Heineken beer advert. The beer brand also features in at least one scene in the new Bond movie. The deal between the moviemakers and the giant Dutch beer brand is said to be worth £30 million with Bond also due to appear on Heineken packaging." - MSM (April 2012) and Daily Mail (April 2012) and The Guardian (April 2012)
"Movies Loaded With Images of Junk Food" - HealthOMG (March 2011) and US News Health (March 2011)
Product placements in movies: When they work, and when they don't - Cognitive Daily
Advertisers Up The Ante As Products Become TV Plots - CCFC
"Product placement picked up momentum when Reese's Pieces were portrayed as the favorite food of America's beloved alien, E.T. Fees charged by movie producers for placing brand-name products in movies range from $10,000 to $1,000,000. For example, Disney's Buena Vista Distributing offered to place brand-name products in Mr. Destiny for $20,000 to $60,000, depending on how the product was to be shown -- $60,000 if the star actually uses the product, less if it's just shown. " - Consumer's Union
Product placement - Wikipedia
Product placement - Source Watch
Branded entertainment - Wikipedia
Product placement - Center for Media and Democracy
Product placement in the DVR era - Using Irony to Sell
Product placement - How Stuff Works
There's something rotten about Enchanted. - Slate
Sundance First: Net Hires Exec To Sell Advertisers Branded Entertainment - Media Daily News
Has hidden advertising gone too far? - CS Monitor
Hell No, Merlot: 'Sideways' Alters Wine Market - Fox News
Television today disproportionately portrays the super well-off - who am i ?
"Can we ever escape product placement? "Supersize Me" star Morgan Spurlock explains how ad campaigns have penetrated every part of American life" - Salon (July 2011)
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Brands
"A recent study reported in The Wall Street Journal showed that there were measurable differences in how subjects felt about themselves depending on what brands they used. For example, students who composed resumes on iMacs expected to make significantly more from the jobs they were applying for than those who used generic peripherals." - Psychology Today Blog (Feb 2011)
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Smoking - Ads & Product Placement
"Exposure to cigarette advertising causes people to give in to unrelated temptations, such as eating unhealthy food or drinking excessively, according to research conducted at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario." - Globe & Mail (June 2011)
"Does the fact that Cameron Diaz smokes a cigarette in the movie Bad Teacher, or that Tom Hanks smokes a pipe in the movie Larry Crowne, really make viewers more likely to smoke?" - Psychology Todayl (July 2011)
"Then I started watching Mad Men. Only one month into being a non-smoker, I was still in a vulnerable state. And seeing Don Draper and his cohorts take drag after drag after drag, I started to pine for that terrible rush of nausea again. I mean, they looked so elegant when their lives weren't dissolving into a series of vices!... The way I saw it, if you saw people eating pizza for six hours at a time, wouldn't you want a slice, too? And isn't sheer exposure the most basic tenet of advertising?" - Psychology Todayl (July 2011)
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The Third-Person Effect
This Under-the-Radar (pdf) article makes a very good point that while people will recognize that the media can have large effects on others, they tend to discount it's effects on themselves. This is called the third-person effect. This effect helps to explain, I think, the public's blaze attitude towards television, and advertising in general.
Advertising and Free Will
"What they found, in study after study, was that participants thought others would be influenced by the message, but that they themselves would remain unaffected. When psychologists looked at the results, though, it was clear that participants were just as influenced as other people. This was dubbed the 'third-person effect'." - PsyBlog (August 2010)
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Flattery
The Spider and the Fly Poem...
"The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,
And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple -- there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!"
30-Second Seduction: How Advertisers Lure Women Through Flattery, Flirtation, and Manipulation
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20 Simple Steps to the Perfect Persuasive Message
"20 Simple Steps to the Perfect Persuasive Message... 7. Match message and medium: One useful rule of thumb is: if the message is difficult to understand, write it; if it's easy, put it in a video... 10. Repetition: whether or not a statement is true, repeating it a few times gives the all-important illusion of truth. The illusion of truth leads to the reality of persuasion... 13. Minimise distraction: if you've got a strong message then audiences are more swayed if they pay attention. If the arguments are weak then it's better if they're distracted... 15. Disguise: messages are more persuasive if they don't appear to be intended to persuade or influence as they can sidestep psychological reactance (hence the power of overheard arguments to change minds)... " - PsyBlog (Dec 2010)
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Miscellaneous
"In the PBS Frontline program, "The Persuaders," there is an interesting analysis of the similarities between the reasons people "join" a brand and the reasons they join a cult. Some in the advertising industry have studied cults, and applied some of what they've learned to advertising strategies. One thing that both have in common is that they try to bypass reason in order to get people to behave in the desired manner." - Psychology Today (Oct 2011)
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Using Irony to Sell
Boxed In: The Culture of TV (1988)
Interview with Boxed In Author Mark Cristin Miller
"There was a magazine in 1934 launched, it was called Bunk... its main purpose, the raison d'Ítre was to make fun of advertising, and all it was, was a series of parody ads, ya know. Now. Inside of two years, Bunk had become a premier advertising vehicle, you see? In other words, the advertiser had himself learned how to knock the product. The advertiser had learned to dispense with a kind of reference, solemnity, that had characterized a lot of advertising up to the '20s. Now a kind of jeering skepticism seemed to be called for. That was a very important lesson. One of the things I want to demonstrate in Boxed In is the ways in which both our political leaders and our mass advertisers have managed to use television to put across the same kind of calculated derision as a way to make people think that they see through things and to flatter the people for apparently seeing through things, but the point is that that penetration is only superficial, and doesn't really constitute a seeing-through."
Product placement in the DVR era
I believe this is the conceit of Media Literacy, that if you are smart, sophisticated and well-informed you won't get suckered. Instead, unlike the gullible public, you'll be savvy enough to see through any media manipulations.
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Marketing to Children
"Strong toy ad dollars on kids' TV networks are fueling a surprisingly higher-priced third- and fourth-quarter selling period. " - Media Post (Sept 2010) via Screentime Awareness
"Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and University of Michigan found that children aged three to five succumbed to the same marketing pressures as young adults, in that they understood the advertiser wanted them to buy something and that buying the product could make them happier."
Research shows that children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased.
AAP - "Children, Adolescents, and Advertising"
"Infants to 3-year-olds: They're a new demographic marketers are hell-bent on reaching." - Ad Week (Sept 2011)
"How Modern Day Mad Men Are Making Our Kids Fat and Sick" - Psychology Today (Jan 2011)
"Popular culture doesn’t want to raise human beings. Instead, it wants to create “human consumings” whose primary purpose in life is to spend and devour. Human consumings buy, buy, and buy in the mistaken belief that it will bring them happiness. You can observe ravenous young human consumings every day in the malls, buying clothes and shoes “they absolutely must have!” Happy children are human beings, not human consumings. Being involves children finding happiness not in things, but in experiences, relationships, and activities that offer meaning, satisfaction, and joy. The ability to just be grounds happy children in who they are rather than what they own, and gives them control over what brings them happiness. - Just Mommies
"Children are big business. And that means my daughter is a popular kid these days. Taco Bell wants her, and so do McDonald's and Burger King. Abercrombie & Fitch has a whole store devoted to her. Pert Plus has a shampoo she'll love. Ethan Allen is creating bedroom sets she can't live without. ALPO even wants to sell her dog food. Even while I, like all American parents, am held responsible for the safety and behavior of my preteen, corporations spend over $12 billion each year to bombard her incessantly with messages that undermine my efforts."
"This is significant when we consider that the most essential product of the advertising industry is hunger. That is, commercials are intended to create a feeling of lack in the viewer, a deep ache that can only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communications Arts at New York University, points out, “What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.” So we hand our children over to Madison Avenue to be told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular they are and will continue to be until they spend (or persuade their parents to spend) a few more dollars. And then we wonder why our children feel so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and why they are so needy."
"In Sweden it is considered unacceptable and is banned for children under 12 with the approval of the majority of the population."
Companies are accused of routinely hiring child and consumer psychologists to "help them target children effectively", with devastating consequences for the health and wellbeing of youngsters.
"Regrettably, a large gap has arisen between the humane mission of psychology and the drift of the profession into helping corporations influence children for the purpose of selling products to them. The use of psychological insight and methodology to bypass parents and influence the behavior and desires of children is a crisis for the profession of psychology."
"A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development."
The Stepford Kids
"What most surprised me were the results I got from my study, which found that the more kids are exposed to consumer culture, they likelier they are to become depressed, suffer from anxiety, or experience low self-esteem. I would have thought it was the other way around — that consumer culture was the symptom, not the cause."
Channel One
Channel One - How Much Remembered?
Consuming Kids: Protecting Our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing & Advertising
Watch Not, Want Not? Packard/Stanford Study Links Kids' TV Time and Consumerism
Effects of Reducing Television Viewing on Children's Requests for Toys: A Randomized Controlled Trial
"Childhood for Sale: Consumer Culture's Bid for Our Kids" - DLC (Aug 2005)
A Review of "Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds"
Research shows that children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased.
"A comparison group of children from Sweden, where advertising to children is not permitted, asked for significantly fewer items. It is argued that English children who watch more TV, and especially those who watch alone, may be socialised to become consumers from a very early age. "
"Identifying determinants of young children's brand awareness: Television, parents, and peers " - Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (April 2005)
"Nine out of ten food advertisements shown during Saturday morning children's television programming are for foods of poor nutritional quality, according to researchers at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the University of Minnesota." - Science Daily (April 2008)
"Spanish-language television is bombarding children with so many fast-food commercials that it may be fueling the rising obesity epidemic among Latino youth, according to research led by pediatricians from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center." - Science Daily (Feb 2008)
TV Food Ads Misleading Kids
TV Ads Add Pounds to Our Kids
TV ads contribute to child obesity
Researchers Say Prime Time for Kids Has Heavy Advertising for High-Sugar Foods
"A report published this month confirms that television is effective in getting children to eat the foods advertised"
"Children’s television networks show 76 percent more food commercials per hour than other networks – and most of them are for high-fat, high-sugar foods, according to a new study." - Food Navigator (Nov 2009)
Other Countries Restrict Advertising to Children
Today’s children are unique in many ways from previous generations, but perhaps the most influencing on our young children today is Television advertisements.
"Sweden Pushes Its Ban on Children's Ads"
"How Alcohol Companies Launched a Digital Campaign Against America's Kids"
"Today, preschoolers see 21% more fast food ads on TV than they saw in 2003, and somewhat older children see 34% more." - Yale (Nov 2010)
"Food and beverage corporations certainly know that advertising works. That's why these corporations spend more than a half billion dollars each year on advertisements for fast food and toy giveaways targeting teens and children. Despite the attention paid to the childhood epidemic of diet-related disease, they aren't slowing down their marketing." - Alternet (Jan 2011)
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