Term Paper on "Advertising to Children Pediatricians Call for Less"

Term Paper 10 pages (2778 words) Sources: 4 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Advertising to Children

Pediatricians call for less advertising to children"

USA Today's article "Pediatricians call for less advertising to children" from last December reports that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wishes to lobby to ban or limit advertisements in schools for "junk food."

Furthermore, the organization wants Congress to enact laws that would stop commercials for "junk food" during shows watched mostly by small children.

The AAP is concerned about the increase in childhood obesity and its members believe that much of this is due to the prolific quantity of advertisements that target kids through their exposure to the internet, cell phones, video games, and schools. The article points to an alarming increase in advertising targeted at kids. Since 2004, companies are spending 15% more on advertising geared toward children, which amounts to $1.4 billion per month. All of this advertising leads kids to consume high calorie, non-nutritious foods and drinks. The rate of consumption of these kinds of items is causing the AAP great alarm. As an organization they fear for the overall health of an entire generation of Americans.

The most alarming information in the article references the amount of advertising that occurs in schools. A surprising 83% of public schools have some kind of campus advertising. Frequently, schools cut exclusive deals with companies who then sponsor teams or assist the school in some financial way. If students are exposed to "junk food" or soda at school they are more likely to consume it. As many as 66% of schools admit to selling low or no nutritional value food. That kind of food is frequently the only food available to kids during the school day leaving them no choice but to purchase and eat it.

The article establishes the problem of advertising in schools, but does not offer any kind of solution or suggestion for that problem. Instead, the article returns to how the AAP would like Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to change the way advertising is presented during children's programming that they would view in a home environment. The AAP advises a 50% reduction in commercials which would reduce commercial time to just 5-6 minutes per hour. This would certainly be a positive start to solving the overall problem.

Unfortunately, the message of the article is confused by references to other concerns about advertising to children. Namely, this involves the advertisements for erectile problem medications such as Viagra airing before 10 p.m. when children may still be watching television. This is an important point to make and part of the AAP's concerns, but the purpose of the article is negatively impacted by references to an issue other than obesity. The unnamed author of the article skips randomly between the two issues which does not allow him or her to effectively make the point that is established in the opening paragraphs.

FTC not sweet on junk-food ads targeting children"

An article entitled "FTC not sweet on junk-food ads targeting children" appeared in the Washington Times last November. The article again targets the problem of advertising to children of unhealthy foods. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to collect information from fast-food restaurants and beverage and children's snack companies in order to study the effect of advertising tactics aimed at children such as the use of characters like SpongeBob SquarePants or video game tie-ins.

The FTC is sending the questionnaire about advertising to children to 50 unspecified companies who must by law respond. Although the FTC is being proactive with their survey, these companies may already be feeling the concern about advertising to children. The article cites two companies, Kraft and Disney, who have already made moves to control how they advertise to children. Kraft has set company standards about advertising to 6 to 11-year-old and will not advertise to children under the age of 6 at all. Disney is being more cautious about the types of products that the Disney characters will advertise.

These moves come in the wake of other efforts to improve the diets of children. Former President Bill Clinton has recently convinced snack-food manufacturer to sell better snacks to students. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and Sen. Sam Brownback are organizing a taskforce to look at how the media is affecting childhood obesity.

The issue of obesity in children is at the heart of the FTC and other's current actions. The article reports that 16% of children are obese compared to less than 5% in the 1980s. Many attribute this increase to the constant exposure of children to advertising that promote unhealthy food. The food industry spent $10-12 billion on advertising to children in 2005.

The article is careful to point out that there are precedents for the kind of action being taken by the FTC and FCC. Through previous efforts other concerns with children's health and welfare have been approached. In particular, the article cites the push against tobacco companies 10 years ago that led to a variety of law suits, but also a general clean-up of the way that tobacco was marketed. Another recent example was the concern with violence on TV to which children were exposed. In the case of tobacco, lawsuits caused the changes which experts say is a possibility in the current fight against "junk food" advertising to children.

However, the article points to the case of violence on TV for setting a better precedent for the current situation. In that situation, the FTC became involved in the problem and asked companies to self-regulate which has several advantages. Companies will self-regulate more aggressively and more quickly than laws can get enacted. Companies live in fear of class action law suits and are willing to make adjustment to avoid those which will most likely have a positive effect on advertising to children.

The FTC's actions combined with the efforts of others such as the Children's Advertising Review Unit wishes to promote a healthier lifestyle to children through controlling the advertising that kid's are see daily. It is really a simple measure, but it could be highly effective in the battle against childhood obesity that is currently sweeping through the nation. Is it the ultimate solution to the problem of obesity? Probably not. It is, however, a necessary step in the right direction. The government and other agencies are sending a clear message to companies that market to kids to be aware of what they are doing and to think of the consequences of their actions.

Children's Recall of Television Ad Elements"

In the article "Children's Recall of Television Ad Elements" from the Journal of Advertising, Jill K. Maher, Michael Y. Hu, and Richard H. Kolbe report the findings of an experiment that they conducted about children's recall of information presented in a television advertisement. The purpose of their study was to determine the extent of which children "create memorial associations with the product" after having viewed the advertisement just once.

The article carefully establishes the motivation and methodology of the three researchers/authors. They decided to test two distinct age groups, first and fourth graders, in order to determine the difference in recall based on age. However, their research went beyond age distinctions by also taking in to account the different elements that advertisers consider so important in children's advertising. In order to determine exactly what the subjects would remember, the researchers divided the students in to three groups within the age groups.

One group would only see the visual elements of the advertisement, one would hear only the audio, and the last would see both the audio and visual.

Based on previous studies by other researchers, Maher, Hu, and Kolbe were able to hypothesize three outcomes:

H1: Children who receive an audiovisual presentation will have the same level of recall of ad information as those who receive only the visual aspects of an ad. H2a: Children who receive an audiovisual presentation will recall significantly more ad information then those who receive only the audio ad presentation.

H2b: Children who receive only an audio presentation will have significantly higher recall of dialogue in the ad than those who receive the audiovisual presentation. H3: Older children (fourth graders) will be superior processors of ad content than younger (first graders) children as appraised by their significantly higher level of recall of ad information." (Maher et al., 2006, p. 25)

After carefully detailing the exact method of interviewing the children and setting up the experiment, the researchers were able to draw several conclusions that were in line with their expectations.

After viewing an ad for "Sunkist FunFruit Rock-n-Roll Shapes," the children were all asked questions by the same person. The conclusions did not deviate from the expectations. Children who saw audiovisual and video-only versions of the ad could remember about the same number of items with the a/V group having a slightly better median. The a/V group had significantly higher number of items accurately recalled than the audio only group. In the proof of H2b, there was some variation between age groups.… READ MORE

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