Advertisers, Do they own you?

Did you know that every time you sit down and watch TV, or surf the web, you are getting drowned with advertisement? Advertisers are sneaky when they try to get to kids. For example, The Health and Human services recently hired Shrek to advertise to kids for a healthier life style. Many children already have a connection with Shrek. McDonald’s ads have Shrek in them, but so do the health and human services commercials. Confusing, especially if you are a little kid. Also, Dr. Susan Linn, the director of the campaign for a commercial free childhood, said, “Shrek is in 16 different commercials for 71 different brands of junk food.” Advertisers spend over 17$ billion dollars for advertisements target children with, Brand Name loyalty, buzz advertising, viral advertising.

Buzz advertising is when a company finds the “popular/cool” kids in the community and pays them to use their profit and start a buzz. Get it? Buzz advertising and the kids start a buzz. That’s funny. But they don’t only try to find the cool kids in that neighborhood; they also try to find celebrities our age. For example, Ryan Sheckler, or The High School Musical cast. They would pick Ryan Sheckler, to sponsor their company. They pick these celebrities because we can relate to them. But, would you really just wear, or use a product just because the “trend setters” are using them. I wouldn’t. Some people look up to those kids, but some people don’t.

Next on my list is Brand Name Loyalty, what advertisers call, from cradle to the grave. What is cradle to grave? Cradle to grave is when they advertise to you from birth to death. When you were a little kid did you have a princess or a Spiderman room? Well that is brand name loyalty. The little babies see that picture everyday and start to love it. They make that picture in their mind to be home. So when they are out and about and see that same picture they get excited and happy. When they are older they remember that picture and be loyal to that company. They don’t really care about the cost, because the person is so loyal to it already.

If you have a Myspace have you ever gotten a comment saying “oh my god I got a 300 dollar Macys card you should get one” or something like that? Or have you ever gotten any pop-ups? That is called viral advertising. Viral advertising spreads like a virus, when someone (advertisers) are getting information off of you and making it seem like you are the one who is advertising to your friends. They also do viral advertising in emails. Say your subject line was something like “Hey, Let’s go skateboarding tomorrow!” a pop-up will probably pop-up saying something about skateboarding. Personally I think that is a huge personal space problem. I mean, viral advertising is random people watching you while you are online like you are a rat in a maze in a little glass box. Invisible people just staring at you, CREEPY!

America has less laws and regulations about advertising to kids then any other democracy. We really don’t have any laws. There are laws about how many minutes of commercials we can have. But, there is no law stating that we cant have a whole show a that is really just an add about a toy. There used to be a law like that in 1984. You can really just advertise to people even if it is unfair and un-safe. It’s not bad that the advertisers are doing their jobs but just don’t advertise about un-healthy things.