Risks of Advertising Targeted on Kids Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Risks of Advertising Targeted on Kids - Essay Example With the increasing media habituation among the kids, the advertising companies are more and more interested in establishing their brand prospects through the persuasion of these pip-squeak customers. Eric Schlosser’s article Kid Kustomers discusses how the children of today are targeted by the advertising companies with attractive ads for their intended materialistic gains. In this essay, I shall discuss briefly the impact of kids-focused advertising among the kids of today. It is obvious that kids-aimed marketing strategies carried out by the advertising companies is causing adverse behaviors among the children, raising concerns in various quarters. Schlosser, in his article, Kid Kustomers introduces the new trend of the advertising firms to target the children for promoting the brands or products or services of their client companies, through enticing and at the same time dubious ads. He briefly describes how this trend came to action, by scrutinizing the working class pare nts who want to compensate for spending less time with the children by spending more money on them. Actually, the advertising companies are well aware of the children’s mentality and know exactly how to get into their heads, for persuading them to nag their parents to buy the products. This makes the advertising marketers to turn the kids as the ‘surrogate salesmen’ for their businesses utilizing the ‘leverage’, ‘the nudge factor’ or the ‘pester power’ of the kids. By discussing the different marketing strategies and research works handled by the advertising companies, Schlosser shows how these ads have increased the sales of the businesses, by utilizing the children’s innocence. He also mentions a few kids-attracting ads by the cigarette and alcohol companies that have caused negative impacts on the children. For instance, The Joe Camel ad campaign by a cigarette company is one of the well-known examples that created adverse effects on the children’s behavior owing to the advertising. It was studied that one-third of the illegally sold cigarettes were of Camels brand, which proves the power of advertising among the young. Similarly, the way that advertising impacts the children is evident from a survey showing that though kids liked the Pepsi and Nike commercials, they are mostly driven by the ads of Taco Bell and Budweiser for its ad characters like talking Chihuahua and frogs. (Schlosser 223). Thus, advertising has a profound impact on the kids, particularly when they are targeted in an enticing way. However, the effects of these ads on the children are still controversial. Though legal measures were taken a few decades ago to protect and regulate the ads aimed at children, the restrictions and bans were later declared as impractical. In the modern days, TV advertisements are broadcast round-the-clock to target children of all ages, and are far from being banned. The advertising compan ies’ focus towards the children for their products’ marketing is mainly because of the great deal of ‘pester power’ and ‘leverage’ by the kids to get their parents’ approval. One marketer notes about this kids-aimed advertising as, â€Å"It’s not just getting the kids to whine, it’s giving them a specific reason to ask for the product.† (Schlosser 223). However, the intended response goes far from the expected reality, as children nag their parents in unhealthy ways. James U. McNeal analyses this nagging and has categorized it into seven kinds, which are used as the requesting styles and appeals by the children to get their pare