Born to Shop: How Marketers Brainwash Babies

[laststeamtrain]

Born to Shop: How Marketers Brainwash Babies
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on December 13, 2007, Printed on December 13, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70488/

Santa's shopping is in full swing. Peak season for what I consider child abuse, family abuse and democracy abuse -- marketing to children. I'm of the baby boomer generation. When I was a kid, there was Tony the Tiger hawking Frosted Flakes and little elves selling me cookies, but marketing to children was peanuts -- well, probably Cracker Jacks.

Everything has changed, and changed gradually on such a scale that we are paying an enormous price -- in kids' physical, mental and emotional health, and in the health of our families and our democracy.

From 1992 to 1997, the amount of money spent on marketing to children doubled, from $6.2 to $12.7 billion. Today they are spending over $15 billion. Children influence purchases totaling over $600 billion a year. Children spend almost 40 hours a week outside of school consuming media, most of which is commercially driven. The average child sees about 40,000 commercials each on television alone. 65 percent of children 8-18 have a television in their bedroom.

Earlier this year 11 companies agreed to voluntarily scale back their marketing to children in an effort to slow down the rise in obesity.

Susan Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, weighs in on this effort and what's at stake. Linn is the Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center and a co-founder of the coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. An award winning ventriloquist, Dr. Linn created video based classroom materials Different and the Same: Helping Children Identify and Prevent Prejudice (with the producers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood). In the face of our media-saturated commercialized culture, she encourages make-believe play. She is the author of Consuming Kids.

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http://www.alternet.org/story/70488/

[YOY]

1. Disney is the worst perp here

The sheer amount of crap with their logo and characters all over them for consumers who really cannot make good decisions in astounding.

I cannot wait until my daughter is old enough to ask for Disney princess garbage...I've got a funny rant for her on just how useful "princesses" are in the world (fantasy or reality). It probably won't work though...

I studied this in Bus. School. It really is sick.

[izquierdista]

2. What to replace marketing with?

I'm not a fan of these articles that decry some psychological tactic carefully researched by corporations that ends up saying to whom you can write to protest their marketing. As if they are going to listen when their bottom line is at stake.

No, what's needed here is to find a behavioral replacement to take the wind out of the marketer's sails. As I said on another thread, if you could convince people to shop at thrift stores and look for quality American used products, instead of buying cheap Chinese crap, Wal-Mart would have to fold up shop. The replacement here, what will get children away from buying every product they see marketed, is to instill in them a curiosity to find out how to make things for themselves, how to derive satisfaction from homemade items.

As long as "homemade" is thought of as inferior to "Made in China", people will be at the mercy of ad-men and marketing executives. But the more pride people take in making things for themselves, sewing their own clothes, building their own houses, making their own furniture, the less they will need mass produced and mass marketed consumer goods. They might even be happier with their material possessions, because they would look back fondly on the effort that went into making it.

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree. Judging by the number of people who would rather eat out, even at a fast food place, than sit down to a home cooked meal, it's a losing battle.

[grilled onions]

3. The Word No Is Helpful

Parents should convince themselves that they aren't bad parents if they don't cave in to everything a kid wants today because they will discover years later they can't have everything they want unless they want to go bankrupt trying to pay for it.
I am a baby boomer and many of the parents of my generation knew very well the word no. We also did not live in front of a tv and also knew that we could not get everything in the store. We would go shopping and knew it did not include a toy here,a stuffed animal there. We did not have tv's or telephones as kids. If we wanted something we either earned money to get it or didn't get it.
Parents would often buy ONE game for all the kids. I can't see those who scraped thru the Depression to be swayed by all the electronic/video games,gadgets they have today. Kids today are not content with one game system.A cell phone can't be a basic model either. A computer has to come loaded. Clothes have to be "in" with a brand name and a hefty price tag. I lived in a generic world. Christmas was a time to get new underwear(basic-not fashionable)slippers and a book. Parents did not and would not go in debt to apease kids and plump up the accounts of Madison Ave. It's time to get tough and find alternatives to tv,radio and magazines endless hynotic allure to the kids.

[Skittles]

4. yes, I remember

now I see parents spending hundreds on video games and Hanna Montana crap and it truly is sickening

[rAVES]

5. My Fiance can recite all the songs from all the ads of toys she wanted as a kid.

Cute, but a little bit scary too..