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Advertisers spend 100s of billions of dollars a year worldwide encouraging, persuading and manipulating people into a consumer lifestyle that has devastating consequences for the environment through its extravagance and wastefulness. Advertising exploits individual insecurities, creates false needs and offers counterfeit solutions. It fosters dissatisfaction that leads to consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation. Young children are increasingly the targets of advertising and marketing because of the amount of money they spend themselves, the influence they have on their parents spending (the nag factor) and because of the money they will spend when they grow up. Whilst this child-targeted marketing used to concentrate on sweets and toys, it now includes clothes, shoes, a range of fast foods, sports equipment, computer products and toiletries as well as adult products such as cars and credit cards.
As you can see, advertising to children is a very broad topic. We have chosen to analyze a section of this topic only, which is attracting a lot of attention these days. What we mean, is to analyse advertising targeted at kids, for adult products. By adult products, we mean products which are not meant “primarily for children.”
Nowadays, kids are used in advertising for financial services, automobiles, detergents, consumer durables like refrigerators, washing machines, mobile phones, stereo systems, televisions, computers …you name it and they are there! These products are not directly consumed by children, the final purchase decision is not made by them. However, children are still used to advertise such products as marketers believe that they do affect the purchasing process. They influence the adults in the family to buy a particular brand of a product.
Marketers may use any one of the following reasons to use children in advertising their products:
1. to make kids influence their parents to buy a particular brand because of advertising which appeals to them (e.g. Wagon R)
2. to play on the emotions of adults by using kids in the advertisements ( e.g. Kinley bottled mineral water)
As you can see, advertising to children is a very broad topic. We have chosen to analyze a section of this topic only, which is attracting a lot of attention these days. What we mean, is to analyse advertising targeted at kids, for adult products. By adult products, we mean products which are not meant “primarily for children.”
Nowadays, kids are used in advertising for financial services, automobiles, detergents, consumer durables like refrigerators, washing machines, mobile phones, stereo systems, televisions, computers …you name it and they are there! These products are not directly consumed by children, the final purchase decision is not made by them. However, children are still used to advertise such products as marketers believe that they do affect the purchasing process. They influence the adults in the family to buy a particular brand of a product.
Marketers may use any one of the following reasons to use children in advertising their products:
1. to make kids influence their parents to buy a particular brand because of advertising which appeals to them (e.g. Wagon R)
2. to play on the emotions of adults by using kids in the advertisements ( e.g. Kinley bottled mineral water)
