The Marketing Situation of Children
Posted by The Situationist Staff on May 20, 2009
The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood has an excellent video, Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood, depicting the ubiquity and power of childhood advertising. Here’s the trailer.
For related Situationist posts, see “Merchants of Discontent – Abstract,” “Hey Dove! Talk to YOUR parent!,” “Spas and Girls,” and “Fitting in and Sizing up.”
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Robert said
The best new book on marketing and psychology is easily Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent.”
It’s funny that a center at Harvard like Situationist parent Project in Law and Mind Sciences would be obsessed with marketing, because Harvard students shelling out $40,000 per year are mainly paying for a brand name on their diplomas. Everyone basically knows they could get roughly the same undergraduate educations at cheaper state schools, but Harvard is in the business of marketing prestige and status to (not fully mature) 17-year-olds, and they begin high school outreach even earlier, which isn’t that much worse than peddling junk food to children.
The Marketing Situation of Children | justme said
[…] The Marketing Situation of Children […]
tamara said
It is impossible in the United States to exist outside of the brand mentality. But who “is” the brand? This is a great clip. I agree that this is a far bigger issue than just children, although since children are a society’s future saying “just” seems wrong. But can anyone really say what the consequences are of being saturated in 360 degree 24/7 promotion? Are we even capable of imagining an unbranded world or one in which something is more important than profit? I say that without any intent to disparage profit-making or to deny what seems to me to be multiple benefits of the existing system. But is there a way to extract those benefits without incurring what seems to me to be far too high a price that is likely to be paid other generations, leaving us unable to really calculate the costs.
Lilian Nattel said
My kids don’t watch commercial tv. They watch tvo (which is Ontario’s parallel to pbs). They watch DVD’s. It’s made a big difference.