Posted on: Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Commercials aimed at kids denounced
By David Crary
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Sixth- and seventh-graders required to watch TV ads at school. The Teletubbies helping to promote giant burger chains. Advertisers seeking data on how children nag their parents to make a purchase.
Those were some of the practices targeted yesterday as psychologists and parent activists met for a symposium on exploitive advertising aimed at children — a counterpoint to a conference of children's advertisers at the same time and in the same Manhattan hotel.
While the advertising industry celebrated itself with the fourth annual "Golden Marbles" awards, the activists moved from a meeting room to the sidewalk for a protest.
They also announced five sarcastic "Have You Lost Your Marbles?" awards. The recipients were Reebok, for footwear ads featuring nude and bikini-clad models; distributors of the "Teletubbies" TV show, for promotion campaigns with McDonald's and Burger King; two market research companies which studied child psychology to boost sales; and the Channel One Network, which includes commercials in a daily newscast shown at 12,000 schools nationwide.
Susan Linn, a Harvard Medical School psychiatry instructor who helped organize the protest, said corporations are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to woo children. Kids influence an estimated $300 billion of family spending each year.
"Comparing the marketing of yesteryear to marketing today is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb," Linn said. "It's enhanced by technology, honed by child psychologists, and brought to us by billions of corporate dollars."
Experts estimate that more than $12 billion a year is spent on advertising targeted at children.
Shelley Middlebrook, publisher of KidScreen magazine, which sponsors the Golden Marble awards, said she empathized with some of the critics' goals. But she disagreed with suggestions that the United States should emulate Sweden and Norway by banning TV advertising aimed at children.
"We can't change the system completely — a lot of things that are good for children are supported by marketing dollars," Middlebrook said. "But the agencies and companies involved want to do it responsibly."
Critics of the Golden Marbles disputed the notion that most children's advertising is responsible. Activists said that much youth-oriented marketing promotes excessive materialism, psychological insecurities and poor eating habits.
"Mothers and fathers are locked in an intense and increasingly unfair competition with advertisers and marketers," said Enola Aird, director of the Motherhood Project of the private, nonpartisan Institute of American Values. "Advertisers have overstepped their bounds and it's time to put them back in their place."
Middlebrook noted that all entries for the Golden Marbles awards were screened by the Children's Advertising Review Unit — a wing of the Council of Better Business Bureaus that has drafted detailed voluntary guidelines for youth-oriented ads. Some of the entries were rejected based on the unit's review.
Elizabeth Lascoutx, director of the unit, felt some criticism of the advertisers was unfair.
"If you take as a premise that marketing to kids is evil, I have to part company," she said. "I don't understand how it protects a child to shield them from advertising until they reach a certain age."
The activists, who have formed a coalition called Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children, issued a series of demands, aimed primarily at elected officials. They included making schools "commercial-free zones," banning marketing that targets children under 8, and starting a Federal Trade Commission investigation of marketing practices aimed at children.
The 32 Golden Marbles awards will be announced today. Categories include best ads for dolls, action figures, snack food, movies and video games, as well as a public service award.
