Over parents weekend I was in Target with my mother browsing around the food section when we saw Campbell's soup cans with the Disney princesses on them. I made the comment to my mom that my sister and I would have killed for these when were little. She agreed. I thought nothing of it until we watched that video about the amount of advertising little kids are exposed to. I thought about as a little girl I couldn't care less about what type of soup my mom bought for us, unless it had Cinderella on it. And if the can had Cinderella on it I absolutely needed it.
Childhood marketing having wiggled its way into the food industry shows that marketers will go to any extent to sell their product, because no child is in charge of what they eat, they eat whatever their parents buy for them. But still marketing for children is in the food industry, only because marketers know they can get the kids to get their parents to buy the products. It is not the end of the world that soup cans have characters wrapped around them, but it does show how much marketing their is to kids, and how it is in every aspect of their lives.
I saw those at Target today and thought the same thing too! Think about how ubiquitous Disney characters are printed on the covers, from stationery to food to clothes. They are truly everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree! When I was younger, I wanted every product that had Sleeping Beauty or Scooby-Doo on it, even if I didn't care for the actual product itself.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It is basically impossible to escape children's products with their favorite characters plastered all over them. It's not good though, because they will grow up with little exposure to things without such marketing and will have a turned off outlook on things that lack familiar endorsements on them.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how so many of the advertisements people have been posting relates to food. Since food is required for survival, it's an easy item to slap a Disney character on. What interests me is how right next to the characters are the bolded words "Healthy Kids". Is Disney now trying to associate itself with "healthy" food?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not have much of an issue of advertising on foods. However, it is extremely interesting how actual healthy food such as vegetables and fruits are not targeted so aggressively. Can this issue possible be linked to the division between economic statuses?
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good point Zuhaly! It is indeed very interesting that mostly food which is seen as a cheap and feeding food is advertised by with children-related topics. I think this is very similar to the McDonald´s commercials. Most of the time those are also focussed on the children and only draw in their parents on the second thought.
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