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16 December 2004 Edition

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Pester power - How the corporations influence your child at Christmas

BY Justin Moran

"If you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to come."

"Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you're a loser. Children are very sensitive to this. You open up emotional vulnerabilities, and it's very easy to do with kids because they're the most emotionally vulnerable."

The first quote is from Mike Searles, former president of the American marketing company Kids 'R' Us. The second quote is taken from the LA Times and is the considered opinion of Nancy Shalek, then president of Shalek Advertising. They are two of the American marketing experts aware that in the United States, children of 14 and younger influence spending estimated in the amount of $600 billion a year.

This Christmas, parents across Ireland will come under pressure from their children, indoctrinated by advertising to be the agents of corporations in the home, to buy the latest video game, with action figure and movie tie-in. Christmas shopping done, a stop-off for food will see children demanding Happy Meals with collectible toys from the latest hit film.

Advertisers call it 'pester power'. By persuading children, who are easy to take advantage of and instinctively tend to trust adults, that they need or want a product, the child is converted into a salesperson, making demands on the parents to buy the item. It is a method as ruthless as it is insidious, and it is big business for toy manufacturers, fast food restaurants and fashion companies.

While pester power is a problem throughout the year, the pressure becomes especially acute at Christmas time, when the stream of TV advertising directed at children becomes a deluge of toys, games, outfits and dolls.

The Late Late

One of RTÉ's national institutions, the Late Late Toy Show, is little more than an excuse for adults and children to sit together and watch what is basically two hours of toy advertising. And if you see a product your child wants, RTÉ helpfully supplies a list of the toys on its website, together with retailer, price and phone number. It should be noted that RTÉ chooses what items to show and advertisers cannot buy slots on the Late Late, but the effect is much the same.

Mini salespersons

For families struggling to get by, the millions of Euro spent on advertising are difficult enough to ignore, without a determined ten-year-old mini salesperson telling you that everyone in her class has a mobile phone, the latest Westlife album and that she would be embarrassed to wear the same jeans to school after Christmas.

Every year, there is something different, something vitally necessary to your children's wellbeing and social standing that must be purchased. A few years ago, an advertising genius trying to sell Pokémon hit upon the slogan 'Gotta catch 'em all', hypnotically repeated with jackhammer subtlety to convince children of the need to get as many stuffed toys and Pokémon playing cards as possible.

Advertisers deliberately target the love a parent has for his or her child, and the natural desire to make the child happy, to ensure social acceptance, to provide and nurture and twist it into a marketing strategy, a form of advertising child abuse. They play on the fear every parent has of being inadequate, of not being able to give his or her child the same opportunities other children enjoy.

Big business

Thousands of highly-skilled and educated professionals in the areas of marketing, child psychology, advertising and education spend billions of Euro, approximately $15 billion in the United States alone, researching your child's desires and wants. They examine with meticulous care the trends in youth culture, what is fashionable, what is out of date.

They develop different levels of pester power. Cheryl Idell, Chief Strategic Officer of Intermedia Advertising Group, wrote books entitled 'Nag Factor' and 'The Art of Fine Whining', arguing that child advertisers should try and encourage children to move from nagging their parents for presents, to whining. "Nagging falls into two categories," she explains. "There is persistent nagging, the fall-on-the-floor kind, and there is importance nagging, where a kid can talk about it."

Research recently carried out by rollercoaster.ie, an Irish website run for parents by childcare professionals, found that over 60% of parents have been put under pressure by their children to buy products advertised in television. One respondent to the survey said, "as a single parent on benefits, it is hard to keep up with the ever increasing needs and wants these adverts encourage".

Research on the reaction of children to advertising consistently indicates that the very young cannot distinguish between commercials and programme content. As children get older, they get more media savvy but are often still unaware of the persuasive intent of advertising, or unable to recognise product placement in their favourite movies or television shows as a form of advertising.

Children's Advertising Code

The Broadcasting Com-mission of Ireland has recently published a Children's Advertising Code, following widespread consultation. The Code recognises the dangers of children's advertising, containing a commitment that "children's advertising shall not directly encourage or exhort children to ask adults to buy them the products or services being advertised".

But while the Commission deserves credit for the work they have done, the Code will only apply to Irish broadcasters, leaving British broadcasters and the rapidly growing cable and satellite networks outside the Code. Without regulation at a European or international level, legislation will lag behind communications technology.

Advertising ban

In Britain, however, the Government announced in a White Paper on public health published in November that junk food advertising during children's programmes will be banned. The plan is part of a strategy to quell a rising tide of obesity in Britain.

According to the Guardian: "The move on children's health and television follows a sustained campaign by parents angry at under-fives being bombarded by TV campaigns using cartoon characters and catchy jingles encouraging them to want unhealthy snacks."

This positive development is an indicator of the kind of change that can be delivered if there is sufficient pressure applied from both within and without the body politic. Sinn Féin has taken a lead on this issue, arguing that all advertising directed at children under the age of 12 should be banned. The difficulty, of course, is in defining what is children's television, with many children increasingly watching programme such as Friends, soap operas or football matches that are not thought of as children's television.

Speaking in Leinster House last year on legislation regarding children's advertising introduced by the Green party, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Communications Seán Crowe told TDs: "Irish children are watching on average more than two hours of television a day.

"Children aged from four to six average three hours of television, only slightly more than children aged 11 to 14 who, despite attending school and having homework to do, find a great deal of time to watch television."

Other efforts to restrict children's advertising internationally have regularly run into difficulties. Over 20 years ago, the staff of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concluded that TV ads aimed at children were unfair because the children were too young to understand that they were being marketed to.

They proposed a ban on such advertising because children are "too young to understand the selling purpose" of advertising. In response, US Congress prohibited the agency from issuing such rules, and revoked many of the FTC's powers.

Targeting children is just good business.


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