Kiosk - The Weight of Reality (page 2)

The Weight of Reality
(continued)

Companies have been relying on the kid market a lot more in recent decades. In 1983 marketers spent $100 million on television advertising to kids; now they spend nearly 150 times that amount. This rise in spending coincides with the increased buying power of children. In 1984, children ages 4 to 12 spent
$4.2 billion of their own money on their objects of desire, while in 2004 that figure skyrocketed to $35 billion. But—and not coincidentally—the thing that came before the big kid-market boom was the deregulation of children’s programming in 1984, eliminating commercial guidelines for children’s television.

These guidelines were established in 1969 when a complaint was filed against ABC for airing the cartoon “Hot Wheels” based on Mattel’s line of toys. The FCC decided that the cartoon was a 30-minute commercial and not a children’s program, because it was based…on a toy…that was currently available for sale in stores. The court, not surprisingly, upheld that definition. Those standards remained in place until 1984 when deregulating Reganomics reined supreme. At that point, the FCC lifted the ban on program-length commercials, giving birth to infomercials and product based shows— children’s programming was no exception. The FCC report stated that “the existing regulatory scheme is no longer necessary to assure operation in the public interest.” One does have to wonder what exactly changed in the makeup of children’s minds to make that “scheme” necessary “no longer.”

The result, of course, was the virtual merging of toy companies and children’s television producers. In 1987, three years into deregulation, eight of the twenty top selling toys were developed before, or in conjunction, with a cartoon character. Back then it was Pound Puppies and ALF. Now, almost every cartoon or children’s program is one long advertisement; they have so many corresponding accoutrements that it seems as if every conceivable aspect of a child’s life is tainted with product placement. This doesn’t just go for young kids, either. While cartoon icons may fall out of favor during adolescence, teenagers are still mercilessly marketed to.

Youth Marketing Systems consulting, the marketing company responsible for bringing candy M&Ms to life as personified characters who discuss how good their smaller, inanimate counterparts taste (who doesn’t love a chocolate candy cannibal?) is also the self-proclaimed “future of youth marketing.” It is, according to its website, “the only consulting company that specializes in the scientific, psychological foundations of child and adolescent development. Young consumers’ needs, perceptions, capabilities, preferences—and ultimately their behaviors—are isolated accurately.” An easy-to follow flow chart specifies that the marketing tools that work with teenagers aged 13-15 are the same as the previous 8-12 stage in many respects, e.g.: fast-paced stimuli and still more complexity and abstraction, anti-status-quo themes, edgier & darker themes, achievement themes, sports, dating themes and relationships, body worship, and cool, realistic characters. Basically the best way to reach these kids is through simulated sex, power and rebellion. Old themes, yes, but updated for the hyper-commercialized lifestyles they lead.

Because kids brought up on commercials might naturally rebel against the status quo that commercials seem to support, advertisers instead sell rebellion through hip hop artists, or market a product with a sarcastic or cynical tone, hyping conformity as difference. Carefully styled alternative and hipster stores like Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters sell $40 dollar t-shirts and $150 jeans with just the right holes to teenagers and twenty-somethings who’ve all decided to be “different” together. Of course you can easily find all three themes—sex, power and rebellion—wrapped into one in any form of media, especially popular music, the Internet and videogames.

Virtual icons on-screen replace tangible toys for adolescents, and the world these characters maneuver through is full of billboards and product placement, just like our real one. Tomb Raider’s erotically disproportionate Lara Croft drives a Daimler-Chrysler Jeep; Atari’s game, Test Drive Unlimited, features a Ben Sherman clothing store gamers can actually enter; and movie billboards, soda machines and fast food icons glow in the background of many of the latest games. Product placement in the virtual world can only gain momentum: the 2006 Nielsen estimates state that in the U.S., 93.8 million persons two and older used a video game system for an average of 2 hours and fifteen minutes per day. Every entertainment medium is saturated with cross-marketing campaigns.

But unfortunately, product placement doesn’t end there; it seeps into nearly every aspect of our society.

With diminishing funds, even schools have become reluctant champions of corporate interests. They often gain desperately needed money via partnerships with corporations. Coke or Pepsi vending machines line the corridors of junior high and high schools and name-brand snacks usually share the space. When I went to junior high school, we had both a Taco Bell and Pizza Hut Express available on campus for lunch. In return for direct access to this captive youth market, schools receive money for various programs, materials and discretionary spending. In fact, a study released in 2001 by The Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University indicated commercial activity in and around schools had increased nearly 500% since 1990.

School libraries promote reading by plastering posters of popular cartoon characters on the walls, parents are encouraged to shop at certain stores and buy products that give their schools “box tops” for points. And teachers, struggling to find a way to reach their over-stimulated, easily distracted, seasoned-consumer students often include television or movie characters in curriculum or conversation in order to inspire them to write an essay or even do an art project.

(concluded on page 3)