Kids and the Media | Category: | Editorials (Andrew Grahn) | | Published Date: | 01/02/2006 | |
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Like many people who grew up in the 1980’s, and like kids of the 1990’s, and kids today, I watched a lot of TV, and I had a lot of toys. The toys I had, and the toys all my friends had, were almost all related to cartoons. What my parents and I didn’t know was that many of the shows I loved were actually half hour advertisements for these toys called "program-length-commercials" or "kiddiemercials" in the industry. These TV shows, (He-Man, GI-Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come to mind), were designed with the explicit idea of selling tie-in merchandise, a fact which escaped most people at the time, and escapes most people today as well. Just consider the staggering amount of Pokemon, Teletubbies, or Sponge Bob merchandise that is available, from toys and t-shirts, to full-length movies and tie-in food products at McDonalds. This is merchandise that you as the parent are the one buying. Not that anyone can really blame companies for making the stuff; kids today have far greater spending power than ever before, and parents spend a lot of money on their kids as well. That’s what has fueled the growth of the toy industry from a $2 billion industry in the 1970’s, to a $35 billion industry today for example.
But marketers just don’t advertise kid products to kids. Adult products like mini-vans are also advertised to adults through children. Consider the mini-van ads with the kids watching Looney Tunes on the built-in TV. When you go out to buy a mini-van, marketers are hoping your kids will say to you, "Lets buy the one with the TV." If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why would auto companies market their products in magazines aimed at youth, such as YM, if they weren’t trying to get to the parents wallet through their children. Again, by looking at the numbers it’s no surprise that marketers focus a lot of attention on kids to sell their products. A 2003 American study found that kids influence around $ 250 billion of their parents’ money.
Many critics suggest that the result of all this attention is that children today and in my day have lost the "innocence of childhood" by becoming consumers far too early. Marketers and media figures on the other hand would argue that they are merely responding to a changing world, which is inhabited by a "new generation of wise-beyond-their-years children." The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, kids today can still surprise you with their innocence, but they can also surprise you with their consumer knowledge, which, considering the world we live in, probably isn’t all bad. But the next time your four year old asks for a Sponge Bob toy or a meal at McDonalds, consider where and how the desire for that product arose.
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