Advertising Content Impact 10 21 2014 Advertising Content Impact Advertising Billions spent on advertising to children each year Why are kids a target market o Influence parental spending Nagging kid needs to ask about nine times before the parents give in o Want to create future consumer Lifelong o A lot of children have their own money Exposure As a result of these efforts American children witness thousands of ads each year How o 360 marketing there are ads in every medium kids use on video games school buses smart phones is this fair o Not really Discrimination Comprehension Attention to ads o Up to age 5 there is no difference in attention to the ad verse a program they are attracted to visual content Program commercial discrimination o Based on age they cannot tell the ad from a program at a young age Understanding of purpose o Don t understand what a commercial is until they are about 8 or 9 years old Skills needed o Conceptual thinking abstract Understanding that an ad is only to make money for a company not necessarily because it is good o Role taking They don t have the ability to think about what would happen if you give socker boppers to their older brother sister o Appearance versus reality Toughest lesson what you see in the ad is not what you get Cookie crisps were really awful o Emotional readiness The marketing is no necessarily made for super young girls Sexualized clothing make up 6th graders wearing thongs Regulation and the FCC FTC First Policy 1974 Limited air time o During the week you can t have more than 10 min of advertising in an hour of programming and during the weekend they get 12 minutes No host selling o Host selling is the lead actor of a television show that is currently being watched cannot sell something they can t tell the difference between the program and commercial No program length commercials o Must inform educate or entertain a child not market Bumpers o They must have an indication that this is a break and not the original show they were watching The Federal Trade Commission 1980 governing body that oversees advertising considered a ban on child advertising completely but they took power away from the federal trade commission so now they have very little power Reagan Era market place approach to government let the market place be and the parents will set the rules not us o Reagan took away first policy Children s TV Act of 1990 2 main parts o educational programming requirement pretty useless had to have educational content and much teach something in order to get a new license for it didn t define what education content was had to be at a time children would watch it had to be where parents could find it o advertising limits 10 5 min hour weekend 12 min hour weekday Bumpers Fade to black or auditory cue indicating that the commercials are starting No program length commercials No shows made to sell toys No host selling When character from the television show that is currently being viewed starts to sell a product But o What about video on demand services Are children more protected less commercials or less no oversight Probably not Effects Age compression o What is a tween Originally 9 12 but now it starts as young as 6 sexualization Psychological issues o Children are becoming more materialistic which is linked back to the amount of ads that target young children ADD not only are TV shows fast paced so are the TV commercials Health o Obesity Usually unhealthy foods are advertised What do ads targeted to children look like Kunkel and Gantz Sample Looked at ads during children s programming 5 hours per day for 2 months 7 US cities 7 channels per city findings o networks 10 min hour o cable 6 5 hour o PBS 0 Types of products findings cont o Toys 34 o Cereal 22 o Sugar snacks 18 o Fast food 6 o Health food 3 o Other 17 music clothes Type of appeal o Fun 27 o Taste smell 19 o Performance of product 18 o Safety 1 o Quality 1 o o o o Results o If children were to consume a diet consisting of the foods most commonly advertised in this study they would ingest 122 grams of fat per day 1 5 cups of sugar per day so what can we do Brands o Given all of this information what are children s favorite brands Used to be McDonalds before 1980 Now apple o What could this mean for the future of advertising Advertising will go toward Tech they will be putting more advertising resources on an iPad or unusual partnerships between Apple another company Regulation Literacy main effort is self regulation Parents need to o limit exposure o parental discussion but usually people do these talks at the wrong time like in a grocery store but they should talk to the kid about it when they see the advertisement how does this compare to other countries o US has the fewest rule of any industrialized nation on the rules about media targeted children o UK says you cannot advertise the most unhealthy food in front of the TV o Greece cannot advertise any toys under the age of 8 o Sweden cannot advertise to children under age of 12 Member States initiatives include for example Greek legislation prohibiting advertising for toys on television between 07 00 and 22 00 and in Sweden a prohibition on television advertising addressed to children under the age of 12 In the UK in 2007 the statutory television regulator Ofcom introduced rules prohibiting the advertising during children s programming of products high in fat salt or sugar 10 21 2014 Educational Programming Definition Planned to meet a specific curriculum goal Produced specifically to teach a child something Legislation Children s Television Act of 1990 if you want to renew your license you must include education programs provisions for advertising educational programming o had to demonstrate that you were providing some educational programming in order to have license renewed FCC Guidelines 1996 3 hours of educational programming per week regularly scheduled time when kids would actually watch it 7 am 10 pm regularly scheduled educational is still vague Despite guidelines educational programs still hard to find Why Economics o Takes research funding o Hard to produce research educational program bc of so much time money o Good v evil easy to sell o Educational cultural references Sesame Workshop consisted of teachers in school systems and they noticed there was a huge gap objectives help disadvantaged kids to level the educational playing field educational and FUN Model for Success Involvement of Experts o Consulted