August 9, 2007
Saturating the Infant Mind With Mixed Marketing Messages
If marketing is strong enough consumers draw false conclusions. The NYT reported that US students scored surprisingly well on economics stuff compared to reading and math, but messed this question up
But on a multiple-choice question that asked students to identify one of the policy tools of the Federal Reserve, only 21 percent chose the correct answer, “buying and selling government securities.” Thirty-seven percent incorrectly chose “increasing or decreasing government spending,” and 31 percent chose “raising or lowering income taxes,” he said.
Which yielded this incorrect conclusion
“This means that students haven’t learned that Congress and the president determine federal spending,” Mr. Damasio said.By giving something a dubious official sounding but bland name and rarely talking about it people can be kept ignorant to what they do.
On the other end, saturating the infant mind with marketing messages works well at educating the public. Google recenlty suggested HMOs educate the public by spamming the web with their messaging via the Google ad network.
Google recently created a feature for Google News that allows people in the news to comment on the news. One of their seed stories was about the damaging effects of McDonalds marketing. How fitting that Google, the biggest online ad broker highlights the damaging effects of advertising and marketing. This comment from Dr. Vic Strasburger, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, University of New Mexico is worth repeating over and over again
How far does a civilized society go to protect its youngest members? How far does a capitalistic society go to make money? Those are the questions.In the U.S., we spend $250 billion a year on advertising....more than any other country in the world. And clearly, advertising works! In this case, on 3-5 year-olds!
Research has shown that kids under the age of 7-8 years are psychologically and intellectually incapable of understanding what advertising is. Several European countries disallow advertising to young children.
What do we do in the U.S.? We allow advertisers to spend $10 billion a year advertising junk food and fast food to children and teens. Then we scratch our heads and wonder why there is an epidemic of childhood and adolescent obesity. We continue to spend $12 billion a year on cigarette advertising, and 3,000 kids begin smoking every DAY! We spent several billion a year on alcohol advertising and then wonder why we have such a problem with drunk driving. We spent nearly half a billion on advertising drugs for erectile dysfunction, but we tell kids "abstinence only." So....we advertise a whole variety of products which are harmful to kids' health, but we seem perfectly willing to make money off of them. The question is (like the Golden Oldie from the 1960s, "The Limbo Rock"), how low can we go?
I would think we will still have few more notches to go before we hit the bottom, however from that height I do not think we will be able to bounce back.
