As we are in the topic of environmental issues and marketing
to children, I want to share with you a series of AT&T advertisements last
year: “It’s not complicated.” This series depicted a casual conversation among
Beck Bennett, an actor and comedian, and four random kids. Children answered
simple questions about which is better: Bigger or smaller? Faster or slower?
More or less? In order to tout the size and speed of the network. Please watch
AT&T’s following video in this topic: “It’s not complicated – Tree House”.
Firstly, how AT&T got kids to make advertisements
captured my attention. Its marketers are cunning to present their stories through
a delightful small chat with kids. Under the impression of kids’ innocence,
people are likely to watch without guards. Underlying messages, therefore, will
be delivered more easily: If kids can think of that, why can’t we? Advertisers
score by using children’s innocence as a tool to charm and persuade consumers.
Secondly, not only the strategies AT&T uses but also the
kids’ answers in this video concern me. They prefer a bigger tree house to a
smaller one because of a disco or a flat-screen TV. They are all about
materials and consumption. Kids don’t want more space to play anymore. They
want a huge space to contain stuffs! They don’t want to invent games any
longer. They want to do “arranged” things! I wonder what factors lead
contemporary children to think about materials so early in life… Is one of the
reasons their parents’ tendency to accumulate stuffs and to rate living
standards based on stuffs they own?
This series of advertisements strike me strongly how earlier
and earlier children are exposed and negatively affected by advertising
nowadays.
Yes, I totally agree with you. When advertisers are marketing their products, meanwhile, the underlying messages they send also have great, unnoticeable influences on children, shaping their values towards the world. For example, in this AT&T commercial, the marketers tell children the bigger the house, the better their life quality would be, eliminating other important factors such as family, friends. They are actually promoting consumerism and materialism which are wrong for such young kids.
ReplyDeleteIt is shocking to see that the boy doesn´t want to have a bigger tree house so he can fit more friends in it for example, but he wants it to fit a flat screen in it. How absurd is that? As you said kids do not seem to play in the spaces anymore but they want to fit their stuff in it. Scary! When I was a child i loved my little house in the garden, because it was mine and my parents weren´t allowed. It was my space to play and do whatever I wanted to do. I didn´t even have any rules. Now these kids only seem to care about the technology. Well probably the writers thought it was quiet funny and of course this commercial is for a technology company.
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