Kid Kustomer
“Kid Kustomers”
No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products. The big boom in child advertisement occurred in the 1980’s. Working class parents had to spend more time in the work place, so this meant less time at home with their children. They compensated for the loss of family time, by spending more money on their children. According to Schlosser, many industries started to pick up on parents excessive money spending on their kids, so they decided to focus more of their advertising on children. Before the rise in child marketing the only kind of advertising kids were being exposed to were products such as candy and toymakers. Now oil, automobile and phone companies are directing their advertisements toward children. These companies knew that most children wouldn’t be interested in such products, due to the fact that they had no need for oil or cars at such a young age. So, advertising agencies had to come up with creative, kid friendly names like “Kid Connection” to draw children’s attention to their marketing firm. Through the wise and successful techniques of Ray Kroc and Walt Disney, companies found out that “children often recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name.” When companies would instill brand loyalty into children it would be known as the “cradle-to-grave” method. Companies wanted kids to remember their brand
No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products. The big boom in child advertisement occurred in the 1980’s. Working class parents had to spend more time in the work place, so this meant less time at home with their children. They compensated for the loss of family time, by spending more money on their children. According to Schlosser, many industries started to pick up on parents excessive money spending on their kids, so they decided to focus more of their advertising on children. Before the rise in child marketing the only kind of advertising kids were being exposed to were products such as candy and toymakers. Now oil, automobile and phone companies are directing their advertisements toward children. These companies knew that most children wouldn’t be interested in such products, due to the fact that they had no need for oil or cars at such a young age. So, advertising agencies had to come up with creative, kid friendly names like “Kid Connection” to draw children’s attention to their marketing firm. Through the wise and successful techniques of Ray Kroc and Walt Disney, companies found out that “children often recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name.” When companies would instill brand loyalty into children it would be known as the “cradle-to-grave” method. Companies wanted kids to remember their brand