Badvertising
Advertisement just might be ruining the minds of our future leaders; children, and as young as six months. At a preschool center, a taste testing was held. Two samples of the exact same food from McDonald’s were presented to the preschoolers, one packaged and one unpackaged. Most of the children said that the packaged food tasted better, some said the unpackaged food tasted better, and very few said that both samples tasted the same.
Advertisers pay psychiatrists to find out how to get the attention of youth. They build brand name loyalty by sneaking in brands into everyday life items. For instance, someone like Pizza Hut may stick their logo onto a toy truck and donate them to a preschool. By doing this, they build a familiar sense with the children in hopes that when they’re older they purchase the brand that they’re most recognizable with. Studies show that children as young as six months can already identify brand logos or company mascots. Evidently, this is some form of brainwashing that wipes out the independent opinions of children.
Teenagers are the most-known group to ignoring advertisements. The advertiser’s way around this? Buzz marketing. People from the advertising company go out and try to find the coolest kid in a community and pay those kids to use or wear their product, thus creating a buzz about it, with peer pressure coming into play as well. Now the internet is opening new doors for them. With chat rooms and blogs, advertisers can now spread new music or brands with the internet at their fingertips. This isn’t a form of brainwashing, but it’s peer pressuring teenagers into buying products that they may not be so sure about, or just plain don’t want to wear, but it’s the fact that they don’t want to be left out of the loop. Obviously, buzz marketing mixed with peer pressure is definitely to advertisers’ advantage.
Now advertisers are bringing it to the next level; specifically targeting adult entertainment to teenagers. Studies show that 80% of 44 R-rated movies had previews that targeted people from ages under seventeen. They purposely run the commercials during hours that teenagers are watching, on TV channels that are popular for their specific age group. A representative from a violent R-rated movie stated, “Our goal was to find the elusive teen target audience, and make sure that everyone between the ages of 12 and 18 was exposed to the film.” Also, music that contains explicit content is advertised on the internet, radio, or even on TV. Though laws restrict the explicit words from going on air, it still leaves it to the consumers’ choice weather to make the purchase of the clean or explicit version. In addition, there are toys and action figures made from mature movies and sold to children as young as four years of age. This is making young people want to jump on the explicit bandwagon earlier than they should. In a sense, it’s another form of brainwashing.
In conclusion, advertisers are definitely trying to get their items flying off the shelves, but some of their techniques are a little twisted. Building brand name loyalty is building a recognizing sense with slipping in logos to the most everyday objects so that when children are old enough to purchase something, they go directly to the brand that they’re most familiar with. Buzz marketing is peer pressuring teenagers into wearing certain clothes, maybe when they don’t want to wear those clothes, but do anyways to fit in. Then youth is being targeted by movie studios to see movies that they are specifically restricted from seeing, thus expanding their audience. Maybe there should be laws about this, because it’s unhealthy for growing teenagers and children. The advertisers are using a form of brainwashing on young children with brand name loyalty. Brainwashing is illegal in some cases, and it should be in this one. Next, the peer pressure of “buzz advertising” is unhealthy for teenagers, when teenagers should wear what they want without pressure that is put on them. It all starts with the advertisers. Changes need to be made before something bad happens, because advertisers are beginning to turn youngsters into shoppers without opinion, turning into just what advertisers want them to turn into. If something isn’t done about this soon, this country will have even more problems than we already have.
