Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood is an in-depth look at how children are manipulated and exploited, every moment of every day, to become the best consumers possible.
The 60 minute documentary directed by Adriana Barbaro & Jeremy Earp exposes the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that works 24 hours a day to sell kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and even the family car.
With more than 52 million kids under 12 in the USA, American businesses have an unprecedented and enormous new demographic to target.
Today, businesses have their eye on kids because they spend more than $40 billion dollars a year on clothes, electronics, movies, toys, snack foods, etc. However, marketing executives are also focused on the adult spending that kids directly influence – an estimated $700 billion a year. Roughly the combined economy of the world’s 115 poorest countries.
Deemed their ‘purchasing power’ and ‘purchasing influence’, advertisers are hyper focused on targeting an enormous range of products towards kids. Surprisingly enough, children have an influence on the holidays taken, cellphones purchased, computers bought, restaurant picks and even the decision of what family car to purchase.
“Most parents don’t realize how corporate marketers intentionally try to make parents absolutely miserable,” explains Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, Commercial Alert.
Marketing companies have studied the ‘Nagging Factor” to determine how many times children need to nag, or how many temper tantrums they need to have, and at what velocity, to ensure parents give in to a purchase demand.
“Kids have a lot of power in the economy and advertisers know it and they are going after the kids in a way that is unprecedented,” explains Susan Linn, Director for Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “This generation of children is being marketed to as never before.”
They are being marketed to through product placement, viral marketing, brand licensing, marketing in schools, television shows, DVDs, the internet, cellphones, there are so many more ways to market to children that there is a brand in front of a child every moment of every day. Whether it is a cereal, fast food meal tie-ins, bedsheets, lunch boxes, t-shirts and sneakers, children are subjected to brand bombardment and manipulation every waking moment of their young lives
“Kids are buried in this media blitz,” explains Dr. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist.
Consuming Kids is a brilliant film explaining how kids are being manipulated into consumerism; in fact young people are subjected to more than 3000 brand images a day. The marketing philosophy in the USA is cradle to grave, let’s get to them as often as possible, in as many places as we can, not just to sell them products, but to turn them into lifelong consumers.
A riveting must see film for every parent.
Visit: http://www.mediaed.org/
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written by Solona , July 04, 2009