Introduction
Marketers have always been innovative in use of themes and different techniques to have children love and ask for their products. On Saturday morning when most kids are free and watching televisions, many advertisements targeting them are run. Different marketers fight for allocation for advertisement time at this time. Various techniques are employed to market these products with each having an underlying message. The advertisements that are most popular at these times are ones related to food, beauty products, clothing, and movies.
For a long time, there have been advertisers who primarily market to children. In times, gone advertisement was limited to newspapers ad, radio, television, and displays in a store. However, today more than half of clothes worn by children have in them some sort of advertisement. Shoes and many items also show labels of popular brands for the child’s friend to see. Influence of advertising has gradually become far reaching. In present day, advertisements are becoming more pervasive and put in a way they do not sound like a sales pitch. These advertisements for children have the same effect as those targeting adults – creating a need where previously none existed.
The children are hooked, and consequently their parents get trapped into buying more and more goods and products. As people get flooded with advertisement from all corners, they seldom recognize the marketing strategy being employed to hook children onto products. This goes to show how influence of advertising has prevailed in the society (Callen, 2010). This paper will discuss the reasons for advertising, methods used and their effects on children.
Reasons for Advertising
Advertising is a form or way of communication that is used to influence and persuade audiences to think in a certain way that agree with the product, service, or ideas. Mostly, the preferred outcomes are to coerce a customer’s behavior in line with a profitable offering, even if ideological and political publicity is nowadays frequent. Sponsors pay for advertising messages and time to several media or advertising houses to pass their message (Beckman, Kurtz & Boone, 1996). Commercial advertisers mostly are after an increased consumption of their product or service when they advertise. They do this through branding which aims at making the consumer’s mind associate the brand with certain qualities through repetition of a product name or image.
Non-commercial advertisers constitute political parties, governmental organizations, and religious organizations. Modern advertising has its roots deeply entrenched in early 20th century with rise of mass production. Various factors drive advertising and this may include introduction of a new product, keeping up with competition, persuade a different market segment, to announce improvements in a product and many other reasons. “The need to keep customers, persuade new customers and keep competition away from swaying them away, advertising has now become a priority to many companies” (Altstiel & Grow, 2006 p.97).
Ways in Which Companies Advertise
With every improvement in communication so does advertisement. In the early days when print media was, popular advertisement was done mainly through the newspapers and magazines. Dumont Television Network in the early 1950s began what is now modern day selling of advertisement to different companies, persons and organizations. This began when the network was finding it hard to find single sponsors for their programs. To cover the costs they decided to sell advertising to multiple sponsors and this was the birth of modern day advertising. In the early 1990s there was seen a rise of cable television and more so MTV. MTV pioneered the concept of music videos ushering in a new method of advertising.
In this method, a consumer will tune in for the advertisement content, rather than it being an afterthought. This gave way for satellite television and cable channels that are fully devoted to advertising. An example of these channels includes Home Shopping Network. Later in the mid and late 1990s, there was introduction of ad server and now marketing through the internet was a reality. It opened up new frontiers for advertisers and websites such as search engine Google, was engaged in this market. The websites revolutionalized advertising and have today still remained a major avenue for advertisers. A recent innovation in advertising is “guerrilla advertising.” This involves use of unconventional methods such as giving away automobiles that are branded with the brands message or staging encounters where people are awarded when they meet with the advertiser.
This method also employs interactive advertising, which makes the viewer a part of the advertising by having the viewer respond to the advertisement. This advertising method is innovative and unpredictable and makes the consumer buy the idea or product. Other new methods that in the few years have started gaining momentum include social network services with an example of Facebook and product placement (Mooij, 2010 p.134).
Influence of advertisement on kids
Childhood obesity as an endemic is a severe public health crisis that amplifies morbidity, death and has extensive long lasting financial and social costs. One of the main effects of advertisement in children is that it results to childhood obesity. This is because the advertisements intended for children are more food lenient. Global obesity rates among children have nearly tripled in the last few years. Obesity levels among preschool children are escalating at an alarming pace with about 20% of children being obese. Data from Disease management institutions show that the obesity incidences have highly increased among children in the age bracket 3-11.
This places such children at dangers of being overweight throughout their lifetime as well as poor wellbeing due to illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and heart infections. Children in the contemporary society are exposed to diverse media types and expend most of their free time watching television and listening to the radio. Studies have shown that there is a strong connection between the increased product promotion for non-nutritious foods and levels of child hood corpulence. Most children below six years cannot differentiate between budgeting and advertising while those below 8 years do not comprehend the influential role of advertising. Advertising aimed at children during this age is, therefore, manipulative by nature.
Children have an outstanding capacity to remember the advertising content to which they have been disclosed. Preference for consumption items has been shown to take place with little marketable exposure and builds up with repetitive exposures. These preferences influence the purchase requests by children, which in turn affect the parents buying verdicts. This has led to increased chances of obesity among children since they feed more on what is being advertised (Ogden & Rarick, 2010 p.125).
The Sexualisation of Children
We live in a world where “sex” sells. There is a belief that if something is not sexy enough then it is not good. We live in a world where every commercial product that previously was targeted for the adult population is now finding it way to the children market. We live in a world where seven year old girls can walk into most clothing and accessories stores and buy high heels, padded bras and full make up kits: and if they do not they are seen as simply not beautiful. In 2008 Tesco, one of the largest clothing retailers in the UK was cause of a major controversy when it started to advertise its “bust booster.” This bust booster was aimed for girls aged seven to eight years old. Children who are not fully satisfied with themselves can accessorize by buying a couple of children’s thongs and bikinis that are sold at many affluent stores.
In the 1980s, Calvin Klein used a 15-year old girl to advertise his jeans. The justice Department started to investigate him after he, Calvin, started using imagery of underage teenagers considered more of child pornography in his advertisements. As advertising, television programs and have continued to have an increase in their adult content. These contents rob off the children off their childhood and throw them into the adult world (Panda, 2006 p.69).
Conclusion
Marketing and advertising may have an adverse deliberate or unintentional impact on children. It may lead to a young child choosing material things over more communally lenient alternatives hence adding to parent-child disputes. This may also lead to a more dissatisfied and unhappier child. Parents, therefore, need to be concerned since children can be easily subjugated especially if they do not get the distinction between television programming and businesspersons. This may also happen if they are not aware of the selling objectives of the advertising agencies. It should thus be investigated whether children have a clear comprehension of the reasons for advertising.
References
Altstiel, T., & Grow, J. (2006). Advertising strategy: creative tactics from the outside. Calif: Sage Publications.
Beckman, M., Kurtz, D. & Boone L. (1996) Foundations of Marketing. Toronto: Dryden.
Callen, B. (2010). Managers Guide to Marketing, Advertising, and Publicity. New York: McGraw Hill.
Mooij, M. (2010). Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural Paradoxes. Calif: Sage Publications.
Ogden, S., & Rarick S. (2010). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Advertising. Calif: Praeger.
Panda, T. (2006). Contemporary Marketing: the changing face of marketing in 21st century. Hyderabad, India: ICFAI University Press.