Advertising to Children in the UK - Essay Example

? Task Advertising to children in the U.K Advertising Corporates advertise in order to educate, inform or remind consumers about their products. Variety in products poses a challenge for each corporate to convince the consumer that its product is the best. Everyday corporates are researching the best way to reach the consumer via advertising. The advertising industry is worth billions in every country. Every advertiser seeks to provide the best service for the client. Hence advertises infiltrate every aspect of life that provides an opportunity for advertising. Posters, bill boards, social networks, T.V advertisements, radio advertisements and mobile phones are among the media exploited by advertisers. Advertising proves to be quite helpful to consumers and corporates. While consumers are enlightened about new products, improvements made on old products and services they require corporates benefit from the large purchases made by consumers. However, advertisers have developed a new technique of getting people to buy even more. This is by producing advertisements aimed at children. Children possess a power over parents. This is majorly achieved by throwing tantrums and crying. No parent wishes to see the tears of their child hence they end up buying the child everything he or she request. There are also parents who are in the habit of spoiling children with everything that children request. Children’s power over their parents is the weakness that advertisers exploit to sell a product. Advertisers ensure that an advertisement is appealing to children. The naivety and incomprehension of children is therefore, exploited. This is because provided the advertisement of a product displays beautiful colors and enticing lyrics, the child is drawn to the product. All children rely on their parents financially. Hence the children pressure parents into purchasing the product for them. This is how kids end up being the best consumers. Parents spend a lot of money trying to protect their children from all forms of negative influence and ensure their safety. However, only a few are making strides toward protecting their children from negative influences of advertisements. Research by professionals from child related agencies shows that advertisements do more harm than good to children. Many governments including successive United Kingdom governments focus on controlling advertising material accessible to children. In the United Kingdom, one of the major departments of the Advertising association is the Advertising Association Children’s Group. The department monitors advertising targeting children. This is done by paying attention to public and political opinion and researching on market developments. The information is then used for responsible development of policies surrounding marketing and advertising aimed at kids. In order to protect children from negativities of advertising, all forms of advertising and marketing to children in British schools should be banned. A parent should have a final say on the products that a child consumes. Hence advertisements should target parents and give them the power to decide the best products for their children. The product they prefer children to consume. A product that prefers to go through a child in order for the parent to purchase it due to the child’s pestering is questionable. How advertisers target children Marketing and psychology Advertisers spend a large amount of money to secure an understanding of the best methods to attract children. This is by consulting psychologists and researchers to find out what moves kids. The researchers and psychologists impart advertisers with knowledge regarding child development, social and emotional requirements of children at every development stage. Results of studies of children’s dreams, artwork, behavior and fantasies are used to create marketing strategies to influence children. The behavior of psychologists and researchers has been termed as unethical. This is because they allow advertisers to access young kid that cannot understand the persuasive objectives of advertising. Pestering Power Children sometimes nag parents until the parents yield to their demands. Nagging takes two shapes, the persistent and importance nagging. Persistence is where a child asks for something over and over again until the parents buys it. On the other hand, importance nagging manipulates the desire of parents to provide the best for children. Sometimes it also applies by appealing to the guilt of a parent who spends little time with their child. However, despite the kind of pestering used by a child, the advertisement works on children. Since it is difficult to make parents get money from their pockets, advertisers use children’s pester power to get the money from their pockets. Loyalty and brand popularization Research shows that six month babies are capable of forming and recognizing mental images. Since the mid 1980s out sourcing manufacturing to countries providing cheap labor has been a way of saving money for companies. The companies use the extra cash to popularize the company’s brand. This is achieved by making dominant advertising messages to consumers. Hence the products build the company’s brand and lure everyone into thinking their brand is the best. Two year olds are able to relate with brand loyalties. Hence advertisers exploit these facts. They advertise their product logos to young children and grab their loyalty before the kids even go off to school. Businesses targeting adults only learnt of this method. However, toy, fast food and cloth companies established this method of advertising years ago. To establish brand in children, adult oriented businesses are establishing kid and teen products. Hence children get to know banks, sport magazines and even news papers at a very young age. The internet The internet provides the simplest way for advertisers target children. Very many factors work to the advantage of the advertiser in this method. The rules governing advertising to children on the internet are vague or non-existent. Vast information about personal preferences and services is posted on the internet. Hence advertisers collect such information during marketing research and use it to create the most appealing advertisements to children. There is a poor understanding among parents about the extent of online marketing to kids. Hence parents often leave their children alone on the internet. This provides an opportunity for children to interact with advertisers on line. Education and corporations Due to financial constrains in school, school boards welcome the funding of corporations. The corporations provide educational materials like computers, laboratory equipment and even cash. In return, the corporations get an opportunity to popularize their brand to young audiences. The corporates access the young children by sponsorship of school events, posters put up in classrooms, school buses or hall ways, making deals to supply their products to the school and others. These favors are all in exchange of funds to ensure the children have appropriate facilities in school. Street advertising Street advertising is a way of reaching the children directly and completely by passing the parents. This method utilizes the weaknesses already existent in the teenage world. Companies get the coolest kid on the block to dress in their clothes. When a cool kid adopts a style or fashion, all the other kids are bound to adopt it. Hence the market becomes an easy target for the companies. Another advantage of street advertising is the buzz it creates. When almost all the children in a community adopt a certain fashion, there will be talk. This might be the word of mouth or even on social networks. Whichever buzz is created; the company stands to gain popularity. Major products targeting kids Fast food products Fast food is one of the principal products that prefer to target children instead of parents. Childhood diabetes and obesity constitute major issue rising concern in society. The health department advises people to avoid foods containing high levels of sugar, fat and salt. Parents do their best to feed children with foods comprising high fiber and energy like fresh fruits and vegetables. However, fast food advertisements undermine their efforts. This is majorly because children always pester parents to buy them products seen on T.V. at the request of the minister for sports culture and media in 2003, Ofcom (the independent U.K regulator for radio, television, wireless communications and telecommunications) researched the role of television advertising of food on children. Ofcom sort to find out if advertising influences children’s consumption of fast food. From the results television advertisements on food carried direct and indirect effects on children’s consumption and preferences. Ofcom concluded that food advertisements on T.V did not solely affect the food consumed by children. Also, it was not the major cause of obesity in children. However, the advertisements majorly impacted on the children’s preference of food. After thorough consultations with relevant agencies, Ofcom released an updated version of regulations on advertising targeting children. The objectives of the regulation included: • Limiting the advertisement of foods with high sugar, salt and fat to children under 16 years. This would reduce the chances of children demanding to consume the products. • Reducing the risk of children misinterpreting a product by making adjustments to standards of advertising content. • Evade disproportionate effects on broadcaster’s revenue. • Maintain advertising standards for adults because they are capable of deciding appropriately. These objectives are reasonable. However, they are only able to limit television advertisement. Children are bound to encounter advertisements of fast food on the internet, posters in supermarkets, bill boards and even at school. Advertisers need to sell the fast food hence they will not stop advertising. Only a constitutional ban by the government would work well. The delay to ban advertising aimed at children especially advertising related to fast food the more the amount of money spent on health care. 97% of the time advertisements influence a child’s preference for breakfast and 95% for lunch. Although cultural, environmental and social factors influence the choice of food, marketers influence the preference even more by making their food look cool. Dolls and Toys The manufacturers of dolls and toys also appear in the list of manipulating children preference. Their advertisements always make a doll or a toy sound like a dream to the child. The advertiser takes advantage of the weakness that children have for toys. The advertisement of a life like doll is unforgettable to a child. They pester the parent until he or she gives in to their demand. It does not matter that the child already has many other dolls and toys. They prefer to be bought stuff appearing on T.V since it seems better and cooler than the stuff they have. A child under the age of 12 is unaware of what is best for them. Ones they are bought the toy they saw on T.V they simply add it to their collection and start asking for the one they saw recently. The child, therefore, ends up being quite spoilt and believing that anything advertised on T.V is supposed to be bought. This makes the child a very poor manager of money in the future. Clothes, shoes, bags and make up Many clothing stores popularize their brand to young children and get their loyalty from an early age. Clothes and shoes constitute a big deal to children. Every child aims at being the coolest. By the time kids become teenagers, they understand that certain brands are the most expensive and the best. Hence every teenager dreams of getting to that status. Most teen magazines try to advice on beauty. Hence lipstick, eyeliner, lip gloss and other beauty products are advertised on the magazines. Most fashion brands establish consumer loyalty here. A young girl might pledge loyalty to sleek and channel for the rest of her life. Effects of advertising to kids It is confirmed that indeed advertisers target children and that children are better consumers of products. However, the extent of damage that advertisements do to children is incalculable. The advertisers ensure the production of consumers to the community as opposed to responsible citizens. Children cultivate the habit of consuming anything advertised on T.V for the rest of their life. It becomes challenging to explain the persuasive intent of advertisers to children. This is because they have learnt to take the advertisements as the truth. Research also shows that advertising causes mental health issues in children’s later life. This is owed to children growing up trying to achieve a certain status in society. For example, only high society shops at a certain store say, Georgia or Channel. The failure to achieve such status causes low self esteem. A person is disheartened by failing to achieve their childhood dream. Another effect of advertising to children is the effect impacted on the parent’s budget. The tantrums by young children lead to impulse buying. In 2010, the amount of unplanned expenditure of parents due to pressure from young ones amounted to 250 dollars. A problem also arises when children encounter advertisements meant for adults. Despite the regulations in place, advertisements of products like alcohol and condoms expose children to grown up issues at a very young age. Conclusion Research by mark Blades, Ph.D. regarding children’s understanding of advertisement shows that: 31% do not know the purpose of advertising, 33% think that it’s meant for a program break, 36% for information and 0% for persuasive intent. This clearly shows that the understanding of advertising to kids is very limited. Hence it should be banned in all British Schools. Advertisers should wait for the children to get to an age where they can fathom advertising and make independent decisions. Advertising to children is unethical. References http://www.fordham.edu/campus_resources/enewsroom/inside_fordham/inside_fordham_archi/20092010/may_17_2010/news/researcher_shows_neg_75386.asp BAILEY, R. (2011). Letting children be children: report of an independent review of the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood. London, TSO. GILLESPIE, K., & HENNESSEY, H. D. (2011). Global marketing. Australia, South- Western Cengage Learning. MUELLER, B. (2011). Dynamics of international advertising: theoretical and practical perspectives. New York, Peter Lang. GREAT BRITAIN. (2010). The British film and television industries: decline or opportunity? : 1st report of session 200-10. Vol. II, Evidence. London, Stationery Office. LU?STED, M. A., & MCILRATH, M. (2009). Advertising to children. 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