unethical;advertising!
Unprincipled advertising
“They want a piece of your mind,” states Harvard professor and psychologist Susan Linn. Advertisers want to burn an image into your head, so that you will be “loyal” to their brand. Advertisers use unethical methods of advertising to brainwash you into buying their products. There are a couple different types of deceptive advertising. The first is immersive. Immersive advertising is when advertisers “sneak” ads in front of you, by putting them in games that many kids play, on sites that many kids go to, and sometimes they make a whole game based on a brand or company. There are many websites where immersive advertising is used, but it is very abundant on www.neopets.com, a very popular kids gaming site. Here they have ads on almost every page, and they even have games based solely on a brand, product or company. They have games like McDonalds checkers and Limited too match game. They want kids to think that if the game is cool, then the product must be too and if they advertise to kids, it might influence their parent’s consumer decisions. Buzz advertising is the next form of advertising. This is when companies get famous or popular people in a community to wear their product. They want the kids they choose to tell all their friends how great it is, and that they should buy it too. The final type is viral advertising. Viral advertising happens most often on social networking sites such as myspace or facebook. They data mine your computer, which means they take information on which sites you visit, and assume whatever you like, your friends like too. Then they send your friends ads, making it look like it was a personal recommendation from you. Companies also hire psychologists so that they can influence kids more easily. Psychologists are supposed to help people, not hurt them. The companies want to create brand name loyalty, which is where they get kids to be familiar with one certain brand and keep buying that brand all their life and sometimes they start as young as 6 months! For example, if you had a Disney princess themed room when you were small, then you will probably want Disney toys, and other Disney products, and then Disney was successful. Another thing that companies do is use brand licensing. This is when companies use characters, from movies and base toys and other goods on that movie or character. For Shrek 3 there were 16 junk food promotions and 71 different brand name promotions. Health and human services hired shrek to be their health food promoter but the problem is that Shrek is already promoting so many junk food items. Advertising to kids is corrupt and immoral. Often the products being advertised to the kids are bad for you. Ads for things such as tobacco, McDonalds, alcohol, violent video games, and R rated movies are a major cause drinking problems, smoking, violence, and more. Most promotional ads feature girls that are stick thin and showing a lot of skin which is a major cause of eating disorders, and some girls get confused as to what pretty is. There are stricter laws against advertising towards adults than kids! In 1983 they spent 10 million on ads, but now they spend 17 billion dollars! Advertisers don’t see this as deceptive advertising; they see it as a way to promote their products. I can understand that they need to make money, but they also need to set limits on and control how they are going about their job. Like I stated before, advertising to young kids and brainwashing them to buy your product is just wrong, and it should be stopped. “It’s out of control and it keeps escalating.” says Dr. Linn.
Filed by two19 at December 5th, 2007 under Uncategorized
