- 69% of 3-year-olds know the golden arches of McDonald's.
Half of 4-year-olds don't know their own name. Should we worry? Dave Hill
on the massive marketing and advertising machine aimed at our children
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- Another Saturday, another full-on engagement with kiddie
consumer world. First, to the supermarket where my second youngest Boy,
five, sits in the trolley as we roll down the heaving aisles and familiar
faces beam at him from all sides. The Munch Bunch urge us to pick the Nestle
fromage frais, cartoon skateboarders Baz and Bud recommend M¸ller
Yogz Crunch Corners ("ideal for lunchboxes!") and the BBC's own
Tweenies disport themselves on St Ivel yoghurt pots. Boy, five, keeps his
counsel but when we reach the breakfast cereals, he sweetly makes his pitch.
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- "Daddy, can we have Golden Grahams?"
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- "No, my lovely, we cannot."
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- "Can we have Cheerios?"
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- "Sorry, pal..."
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- "Can we have Coco Pops?"
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- "Nope."
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- It's a classic parent-child set piece: the triple ask-and-rebuff.
Then comes the guilt-inducement probe.
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- "Daddy? Why not?"
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- "Because..."
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- I could snow-job him at this juncture, blizzard the little
fellow with detailed deconstructions of the finely spun nutrition claims
that really piss me off ("There's a whole lot of good in those little
Os" my ass), heap scorn upon the proffered free Cartoon Network wobbleheads,
perhaps go into Prudence mode and explain as best I can that even a dual
media income household has to stick to its budget when it has five other
children to support. Instead, I tenderly hand him 48 Tesco Wheat Biscuits
and he gives in. Boy, five, after all, has heard such speeches before,
such as when Chupa Chups or king-size Mars bars tempt him in sweet shops,
or when he gets his Christmas hopes up about Hot Wheels Alien Attack.
-
- On the way home, a pavement hoarding shows a preteen
female modelling items from the Barbie clothing range - "Real Fashion
for Real Girls". Lugging bags-for-life through the front door I reflect
irritably on what is meant by "real" in this context, and then
locate Girl, seven, playing with Girl, 18 months, while half-eyeing Children's
ITV commercials for pouting, vamping Bratz and Flavas dolls, Clikits accessories
("you're a very stylish girl...") and, making the deepest mark,
yet one more contender from the vast Barbie-branded range - meet Shampoochie,
a pink mock-canine confection in a mauve plastic bath with matching towel
and foaming gel. Wannabe beauticians fuss around her. "More bubbles,
Miss Shampoochie?" they chirp in American mall accents. "You're
so saaft. Gorgeous!" And, oh, it's so seductive for Girl, seven, (soon
to become Girl, 8, and anxiously recompiling her birthday guest list for
the hundredth time).
-
- What is the effect of my children's daily immersion in
a swarming consumer culture? Adults worrying about children wanting, and
sometimes getting, too much of the wrong stuff is as old as the term "spoiled
brat". Yet the scale, style and sophistication with which even pre-school
youngsters are now wooed by commercial interests means I am not alone in
wondering if it has all got out of hand.
-
- The stuff kids put in their stomachs is one major concern,
with 8.5% of six-year-olds and 15% of 15-year-olds classified as obese
and what could or should be done to tame, say, Tony the Tiger becoming
a matter of political debate. The promotion of fatty, sugary and salty
foods and its implications for diet are under scrutiny from the food safety
watchdog, the Food Standards Agency and the Commons health select committee,
while Labour MP Debra Shipley strives to regulate TV commercials for snack
foods aimed at kids.
-
- Meanwhile, in an another part of the same jungle, disquiet
is expressed that out-and-out sex mania is being insinuated into market-
driven landscapes where children are urged to roam - especially those designed
for young girls. The complementary efforts of the fashion, magazine and
persuasion industries are cited as chief culprits here.
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- Megan Bruns of Kidscape, the charity concerned with keeping
children safe, speaks of a "distressing trend" for girls as young
as seven or eight to be encouraged to enact identities for which they simply
aren't prepared: mainstream retailers offering padded bras and thongs to
prepubescents until campaigners made them think again; consumer magazines
bought by the barely adolescent dispensing tips on tarting up and chasing
boys. "They argue," says Bruns, "that they are meeting a
social need. They say children want to look good and so on. The real reason
is that they want to make money out of kids."
-
- And do I hear jingle bells? I've been hearing them, in
fact, since September 13, two weeks after returning from summer holiday,
when I saw Santa on a family tin of Cadbury's Roses. I heard them again
at the end of October in a TV ad for Argos: Spend more than £24 on
Barbie (her again) dolls and accessories, it said, and you'd get a CD player,
free! You had to hurry, though, because the offer ended on November 5.
So important, don't you think, to pounce on those Christmas offers before
Bonfire Night?
-
- My, how the young shopping experience has grown! It is
hard to believe that only 50 years ago there was barely such a thing as
a specific teenage market. Today, as well as teens, there are preteens,
tweenies, tinies and it sometimes seems only a matter of time before someone
finds a way to cultivate brand consciousness in the yet-to-be-born. Whatever
shorthand shall we use? Foeties? Wombies?
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- Awareness of global emblems is already strongly implanted
in the very young. Last year the International Journal of Advertising and
Marketing to Children reported that 31% of three-year-olds remember having
seen the Coca-Cola logo, 69% McDonald's and 66% that for Kinder confectionery.
Meanwhile, according to teachers surveyed for a Basic Skills Agency report,
about half of four- and five-year-olds entering school for the first time
cannot recognise their own names - or speak in a way understandable to
others or count up to five. Could these things be connected? Could it be
that their induction into consumer society is making our children fat,
dull, prematurely obsessed with shopping and sex and that the situation
is getting ever worse?
-
- Sadly, there are no easy answers. The debate about food
ads makes the point well. In August, this newspaper ran a polemic by Marina
Palomba, legal director of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
While acknowledging that advertising "has some effect on children"
she insisted it was "a relatively minor influence on their eating
habits", and claimed that consumer groups and politicians were seeking
to "shift the blame for increasing levels of obesity to an easy target".
Jeremy Preston of the Advertising Association, the institute's lobbying
arm, stresses furthermore that all advertising directed at children has
to abide by strict codes and that "the principal reason companies
advertise is to maintain market share".
-
- How does the other side respond? In September the food
pressure group Sustain welcomed a review by a team of academics, compiled
for the FSA, of 101 previous research projects on the effects of food promotion
to children. Team leader Professor Gerard Hastings was able to conclude
that "advertising to children does have an effect on their preferences,
purchase behaviour and consumption, and these effects are apparent not
just for different brands but also for different types of food". However,
the review's remit did not extend to quantifying how great the influence
of food promotion is compared with factors emphasised by the food industry
and adland such as peer-group pressure, sedentary lifestyles or, of course,
parental choice. Even Sustain doesn't over claim in this respect. "A
TV advertising ban is worth having," asserts its spokeswoman Jeanette
Longfield, "but it is just one part of a much bigger picture."
-
- Where advertising is concerned, that picture is subtle,
and not only with regard to diet. Three years ago Dr Karen Pine of the
University of Hertfordshire found that children under seven who watched
the most commercial television also requested the greatest number of gifts
in their letters to Father Christmas. She also compared the sample's wish-lists
with those of children from Sweden, where no advertising to children is
permitted. The Swedish children asked for a lot less. Sounds conclusive.
But Dr Pine stresses that "direction of causality" is not proved
by her results. "It could be that children who want more things expose
themselves to more advertising rather than the other way round. It's the
same problem as with trying to find links between violent behaviour and
watching violence on television. It is a methodological minefield."
-
- Others agree. Dr Dale Southerton of Manchester University,
who specialises in the study of consumer culture, cautions that there is
more to its dynamic than simply commercial interests "targeting"
children in order to generate "false" or harmful needs. Parents
tend, for example, to direct their children towards products that reflect
their own values. Talk of "pester power" fails to recognise that
parents' anxieties about their children "fitting in" can be at
least as acute as the children's. "It's a kind of irony," says
Southerton, "that although parents fear children's consumption they
embrace it too."
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- Another argument has it that many toys now on the market
offer little scope for creativity. Personal experience tends to support
this: two Christmases ago Talk 'n' Tango Baby (or whatever) crawled glutinously
for a week then disappeared beneath a layer of dust. Hot Wheels Octoblast
cost a small fortune in batteries before its appeal also waned for the
same lack of versatility. But children often make toys over in imaginative
ways. Little black girls braid and otherwise Africanise white dolls. And
what about what Sid in the film Toy Story did? Children may be "bombarded",
with inducements to want things, but they are never wholly passive. Teenagers,
notoriously, are a nightmare to impress, heaping scorn on anything they
deem "fake".
-
- And what of fears that we are losing something far more
precious than money - childhood itself? Death of Childhood theories gained
currency in the 80s as liberated market forces addressed new categories
of children and moral conservatives worried that this was one of many factors
forcing kids to grow up too soon. For example, Eileen Wojciechowska of
Family And Youth Concern is enraged by the "suggestive dancing"
of little girls in adverts.
-
- And yet... haven't little girls always tottered around
in mummy's heels and, at least since the 50s, gone on to have crushes on
body-hairless pop stars before their first period starts? And, anyway,
aren't those periods often starting at primary-school age these days? Wasn't
the hero of Just William forever scoffing sweets? As for "targeting"
children with heaps of fancy playthings, retailers have been at it for
a century. In his book Toys Were Us, Nicholas Whittaker writes that the
1913 catalogue of the London department store Gamages devoted 156 pages
to toys. Could it simply be that capitalism has got better at providing
children with the things they've long enjoyed?
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- Yet one more Saturday and Girl, 7, becomes Girl, 8. She,
mummy, me, Girl, 18 months, Boy, 5, and half a dozen friends head off for
her birthday treat. First, to McDonald's where the children eat, laugh
and play with their free Finding Nemo toys. "I'm lovin' it!"
Boy, 5 says. Then we mooch through a shopping centre, compare jewellery
and clothes, before piling into the cinema where mummy and I decline to
buy Coke by the bucketful or ice creams at a despicable £2.15 a time
and, instead, make the gang share two big bags of Maltesers and sneak in
bottles of water brought from home. On the way back, I ask Girl, 8, and
her gang if they've enjoyed their day, "It was wicked," they
assure me. "It was cool."
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- Problem, anyone? The food was cheap and none was wasted,
the freebies were enjoyed and the film unanimously praised. As for the
oversized soft drinks and overpriced ice creams, parental responsibility
and consumer choice functioned in harmony. The fat content of the Happy
Meals was not ideal, of course, but they probably ran that off playing
chase games on the cinema forecourt. So does this archetypal early-21st-century
fun day out show that all is well as long as parents exercise a little
responsibility? Not according to Martin Barnes, director of the Child Poverty
Action Group. He is no great advocate of advertising bans but is adamant
that "too much responsibility is thrown back on parents to say no.
When you look at the resources put in to reaching children - even child
psychologists are used - it's staggering. It's the cumulative impact that
counts, and it hits low-income parents particularly hard."
-
- Gill Keep of the National Family and Parenting Institute,
takes a similar view. "Of course parents have responsibility in these
matters but you have to recognise the sheer might of the corporations.
Government has a part to play in this. Families need more of a helping
hand."
-
- What sort of hand? Dr Hugh Phillips, a retail researcher
at Bournemouth University, would like an end to high-priced toys being
advertised during children's TV programmes because the sums involved are
greater than the pocket money most children receive and, therefore, understand.
Other products, he believes, should be "negotiated within the normal
child-parent relationship". Might there be movement on this front?
A year ago the Observer reported that culture secretary Tessa Jowell had
given a "private government guarantee" to the food and advertising
industries that there would be "no ban no food commercials shown during
children's TV time". Asked if this was, indeed, government policy
the Department of Culture, Media and Sport provided a statement saying
the impact of food advertising deserved examination and that "any
decision about moving beyond the present code of [advertising] practice
would have to be based on scientific evidence which is why we welcome the
current enquiry by the FSA."
-
- Time will tell. But even if knocking the Honey Monster
on the head didn't help the nation's tiny tubbies shed a few pounds a case
could still be made that any government move to clear a bit of cultural
space where children aren't being grabbed at by industries whose main motivation
- profit - the youngest do not even understand would have a valuable effect.
"There's definitely more of a consumerist attitude among pupils than
20 years ago," says Alan Wells, director of the Basic Skills Agency.
"Teachers tell me they expect instant gratification, and that is bound
to have an inhibiting effect on getting them doing anything that's difficult,
but might help them long term. People sometimes go on about making learning
fun. Well, learning is as much fun as going to the dentist sometimes. The
problem is it's become more difficult to convince a lot of children that
the discomfort is worthwhile."
-
- You can see what he means - in the latest Bliss magazine
("30 Things Sexy Girls Do - Give Good Attitude, Get The Guy!') its
sensible advice section and Busted-backed Be Sexy Be Sussed campaign are
swamped by hints on scoring in the adolescent sexual market and guides
to the fashion products that will help. Of course, it's easy to take this
stuff too literally. Like most glossy magazines, Bliss and its like construct
fantasy lifestyles, places of escape. Also, though, they trade on aspiration
- and its malign sidekick, anxiety. I'm not against snogging tips or Umberto
Giannini Glamour Glitter Mist any more than I'm opposed to sex education
or the odd bowl of Sugar Puffs. What I don't want is Girl, 8, to grow up
urged to be a silly fool.
-
- Helping children to gain wisdom; to make balanced judgements;
to develop the empathetic and critical intelligence they need to be fulfilled
and moral citizens in a demanding world, these are the things I want for
my three youngest and their big brothers Boy, 12 and Boy, 14, just as I
did for their grown-up sister, Young Woman, 19. Is it asking too much of
some of the planet's most powerful industries that they set an example
to help bring these things about?
-
- Could be, actually. The most charming TV ad campaign
I've seen recently is for a drink, Fruit Shoot, which comes in a sports
bottle. A boy playing cricket sticks up for what is right by admitting
he didn't take a clean catch; another boy upbraids two others for not letting
a girl have a turn on a trampoline. "New Thinking," the tag line
says. The Fruit Shoot label boasts of "added vitamin power".
The marketing mission here, it seems to me, is to associate the product
with nutritional benefit and the ethical high ground. Yet it mostly comprises
water, contains chemical additives (there are three E numbers in the small
print) and very little fruit juice. I asked makers Robinsons if the person
responsible could answer the charge that this is a campaign of deliberate
deception. Instead, it issued a statement.
-
- "Fruit Shoot, like all soft drinks, has a valuable
role to play in a healthy diet, providing vital fluid... Dehydration can
impair concentration and performance. Fruit Shoot provides hydration and
also contains 10% juice. The addition of vitamins provides reassurance
to mums."
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- Sincerity or spin? Reader, you decide. Decide too, if
Girl, 8, is better or worse off for being given Shampoochie for her birthday.
After all, she and her best friend derived some pleasure from assembling
all the bits and Boy, 5, enjoys pampering the ludicrous creature too. Maybe,
in some ways, we fret too much about what's put before our kids. Maybe
contemporary disquiet about the hard-selling of junk foods and status-freighted
toys and clothes is partly driven by a sentimental fear of children embracing
modernity and partly of a piece with the climate of misplaced panic that
has parents seeing paedophiles on every street corner and fearful of letting
youngsters play outside or walk to school. And yet an argument remains
that the powers that be are failing to meet their responsibilities. Perhaps
the only way to change that is for parents to learn from "spoiled
brats": to nag, argue and pester until we get our way.
-
- - Dave Hill is author of Dad's Life (Review, £6.99)
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1082217,00.html
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