Advertising to Children on TV

Content, Impact, and Regulation

Barrie Gunter, Caroline Oates, Mark Blades

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135626303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Concern is growing about the effectiveness of television advertising regulation in the light of technological developments in the media. The current rapid growth of TV platforms in terrestrial, sattelite, and cable formats will soon move into digital transmission. These all offer opportunities for greater commercialization through advertising on media that have not previously been exploited. In democratic societies, there is a tension between freedom of speech rights and the harm that might be done to children through commercial messages. This book explores all of these issues and looks to the future in considering how effective codes of practice and regulation will develop.

1
The Issues About Television Advertising to Children

This chapter introduces the issues related to advertising aimed at children and describes the concerns that it generates. In particular, the debate about television advertising is discussed. This debate has raised many questions about the nature of advertising. Is it fair to advertise to children unless they fully understand the intent of the advertisers? If young children do not understand that intent, then when do they develop that ability? Is television an effective way to market products to children? Are the products (such as food and toys) typically aimed at children, the type of products that children should be encouraged to buy? Are children encouraged to buy or try unsuitable products (such as alcohol or tobacco) from viewing advertisements even when those advertisements are not aimed at them? Does advertising encourage a more materialistic attitude in children? Or is it appropriate that children learn to be effective consumers from an early age? Does encouraging children to buy products lead them to pester their parents and cause family disputes? Does television advertising present an accurate or misleading image of the world to children? Should advertising aimed at children be regulated? If so, how strict should that regulation be and, in a global market place, should regulators draw up common guidelines across different countries and cultures? Should we educate children about advertising, and if so, who should take on the role of educator?

All these questions have generated debate and research and will be discussed in this book. Given the controversial nature of television advertising aimed at children, this chapter discusses issues relating to television advertising and explains why they have become matters of concern. This book touches on the different concerns by way of introduction to the controversies that have been generated, and in doing so, it mentions the different points of view that have been put forward. None of the issues are straightforward because most involve a debate between those who accept or argue the economic importance of reaching the large children’s market and those who believe that children need protecting from the effects of advertising in general or from the advertising of particular products. Nonetheless, most of the issues that have generated debate are open to empirical research, and the results from this research will be examined in more detail in the following chapters.

Children have spending power. Children 12 years or younger in the United States controlled the spending of $28 billion in 2000. This was spending from their own allowances and earnings. In addition, they influenced $250 billion of family spending. In the United States, the amount that children have to spend doubled between 1990 and 2000, and similar trends are found in European countries (Lawlor & Prothero, 2002). The figures for other countries are equally impressive. For instance, McNeal and Zhang (2000) estimated that only one fourth of Chinese children live in the main cities of China, but these children alone spend more than $6 billion of their own money and influence more than $60 billion of family spending.

Given these figures, the market for selling products to children is potentially immense, and it is not surprising that in those countries that have established traditions of advertising, much of that advertising is aimed at children, often via television and other media. Children and teenagers in the United Kingdom and in the United States may, on average, spend between four and five hours a day, outside school time, watching some form of electronic media (Cooke, 2002). In the course of that time, they will be exposed to a very large number of advertisements. Estimates of how many advertisements vary depending on the age of the child, the country in which they live, and the particular channels they watch. Kunkel (2001) suggested that contemporary children in the United States may view more than 40,000 advertisements every year, and Kunkel and Gantz (1992) found that more than 10 minutes of every hour of network U.S. television programs were given over to advertising material. The sheer number of advertisements means that many children spend a significant proportion of their lives watching advertising.

Marketers are particularly interested in how effective their advertising is in selling more products and establishing new markets. This includes finding ways to make existing media campaigns more effective within existing regulations or by campaigning to relax regulations (Curran & Richards, 2000). It might mean reaching children in different age groups—for example, reaching children younger than advertisers targeted in the past. The increase in popular programs (e.g., the BBC’s Teletubbies in the U.K.) designed for very young children has opened up new opportunities for selling toys and associated material to ever younger age groups (Hind, 2003). The markets for such commodities can be global. Marketers may also exploit opening markets where advertising and marketing has been limited previously because as pointed out above, countries such as China have vast potential children’s markets (O’Hanlon, 2000).

Advertising to children is, therefore, increasing, and despite new marketing approaches aimed at children, such as the Internet (Thomas & Dillenbeck, 2002; Thomson & Laing, 2003), the predominant way of advertising to children is via television. Television is an invasive medium because it reaches children in their own homes, and there is only limited control over the advertisements that are seen. Of course, children (and adults) may not always give their full attention to the screen during advertisement breaks because they can turn away or leave the room, but in practice, the viewer has the opportunity to see all the advertisements associated with any program they watch. Parents may restrict the channels that children view or the times that children watch television. But parental control is obviously weaker if children have access to television independent of their parents, and in the United Kingdom, two-thirds of children aged seven to 10 years have a television in their bedrooms. Three-quarters of children aged 11 to 14 years not only have a television in their own room but a third of that age group also have a video recorder that in effect allows them access to programs at any time (Smith, 2001).

The underlying concern about television advertising is whether it exploits children, and this exploitation is sometimes described in emotive terms with references to “seducers” (the marketers) and “innocents” (the children, particularly young children). In this context, advertising is seen negatively with the criticism that advertising persuades children to buy products they do not need and spend money they may not have (Young, 1990). Product advertising places an emphasis on possessions and on aspiring to a certain lifestyle (Hahlo, 1999). This is especially the case for branded products where the emphasis of the advertising is on purchasing not just a product but a product with a particular label, and as Weller (2002) found, children can recognize brands and logos before they can read.

Children’s desire to possess products they have seen on television is said to lead to “pester power,” which means that children pester their parents or other adults to buy things for them (Proctor & Richards, 2002). This can be at the level of children negotiating products during family shopping trips—often successfully from the child’s perspective; Parker (2001) pointed out that U.K. parents spend, on average, £7 ($10) more when supermarket shopping with children than without them. Pester power can also be long term when children wage a campaign of requests and demands in advance of birthdays and Christmases. For instance, Crouch (1999) found that three quarters of children had started asking for Christmas presents before October. Children’s pestering can lead to family conflicts when parents refuse to buy products either because they cannot afford to buy them, or because they believe them to be inappropriate for their children (e,g., snack foods), and this may lead to anger, frustration, and disappointment (Atkin, 1978). Such is the significance of children’s influence in commodity purchasing, whether they purchase for themselves or through their parents, that marketers have increased the volume of research they conduct among young consumers. Specialist agencies conduct research even among preschool children (Swain, 2002).

Given the large number of television advertisements that children experience, children inevitably are aware of far more products than parents are able or willing to buy. But some marketers have argued that pester power is not a source of conflict but more the basis for child-parent negotiation about what to buy (Pilgrim & Lawrence, 2001). Others have pointed out that advertising may not always be the reason for children pestering parents. Proctor and Richards (2002) suggested that many toys sell well with little or no advertising at all because they become part of a popular “craze.” For example, the Harry Potter range of toys, games, and foods were marketed following the success of the Harry Potter novels, but the books themselves became a success mainly because of word-of-mouth between children. Other marketing phenomena like Pokémon take on an existence of their own that goes well beyond any initial advertising (Proctor & Richards, 2002). According to this argument, therefore, children may well pester adults but not all such pestering is the direct result of advertising. We discuss the issue of pester power in chapter seven.

Critics have argued that advertising encourages children to view important social and religious events (such as Christmas) in purely commercial terms. For example, Pine and Nash (in press) asked children to write letters to Santa Claus listing what they wanted for Christmas. They found that the children who watched more television advertisements asked for more presents and that they asked for more presents by brand name. The pressure to buy particular brands leads to a conformity across different cultures (Byfield, 2002), and more generally, the international market for children’s products detracts from local products and traditions.

An alternative way of considering these issues is to point out that the globalization of children’s markets and the use of advertising means that children in different countries now have a greater choice of products. They are no longer limited to locally produced goods, and aspiring to the same brands implies a desire for certain standards and a conformity that is actually positive in a world that, in both the past and the present, has been divided by national, cultural, and religious conflicts. Eden (2000) suggested that selling the same products to children in different countries does not necessarily damage local traditions and practices. Eden pointed out that European countries have many different traditions relating to events such as Christmas, Easter, or Halloween, which all generate a market for selling to children. But the different traditions all overlie themes and beliefs that are held in common, and marketers address these common themes rather than the expression of them in a particular culture.

There are concerns about the advertising of particular products, particularly the promotion of food products (see, e.g., chaps. 2 and 8, this volume). A large proportion of advertisements aimed at children promote food or drinks. For instance, Lewis and Hill (1998) found that half the advertisements aimed at children on U.K. television concerned food. A third of these advertisements were for cereals, a third were for sweets and snacks, and most of the rest were for ready-made meals and other convenience foods. These are all products that have been criticized as being the less healthy food choices (Dalmeny, Hanna, & Lobstein, 2003). Such food advertising is one-sided because little television advertising aimed at children emphasizes healthy eating. This is because of the relative wealth of the advertisers who market food products and who can afford extensive advertising campaigns and those who advocate healthy eating but do not have the same resources available to convey their message (Conner & Armitage 2002). Few health campaigns could match the size and extent of the marketing that might go into selling a product such as a chocolate bar (see, e.g., Ellyatt, 1999b). The result is that children are exposed to a large number of television advertisements trying to persuade them to choose sweetened drinks and snack foods, with little emphasis on alternative, more healthy foods.

Children in some countries do not eat a balanced diet. For example, hardly any children in the United States meet recommended dietary requirements (Munoz, Krebs-Smith, Ballard-Barbash, & Cleveland, 1997). But it is not clear how far the failure to eat a well-balanced diet can be attributed to the effects of advertising. Children’s recall of food advertisements correlates with what they ask for during shopping trips (Galst & White, 1976) and with what they eat (Hitchings & Moynihan, 1998), and so there is a relationship between advertising and eating choices, but the nature of that relationship is not always clear (Lewis & Hill 1998).

The number of children with obesity in the United States has dramatically increased in recent years, and this may in part be due to the persuasive nature of food advertising (Strasburger & Wilson, 2002). However, since the start of television advertising, the largest proportion of advertisements aimed at children has always been for food products (Young, 1990, 2003). For this reason, marketers have pointed out that the proportion of food advertising is unlikely to be the only or the main factor in the recent growth in obesity. Other changes in lifestyle, such as lack of exercise, increased use of cars, sedentary occupations (including more time spent watching television and playing computer games), and different family eating habits (such as a dependency on convenience foods), may all be factors in the increase in children’s weight (Lvovich, 2003).

Advertisers could also point to the fact that children receive information about nutrition through other sources (such as school) and should be aware of healthy eating practices. Some have argued that the best way to market food to children is by stressing healthy eating and by including nutritional information that complements other sources of that information (Strong, 1999). Indeed, Reece, Rifon, and Rodriguez (1999) found that most cereal advertisements included nutritional information, but this usually consisted only of statements that the food was part of a balanced breakfast or brief details of a specific nutrient such as vitamin C. Other food advertisements were less likely to include nutritional information. The use of nutritional information can be viewed as either a positive addition to food advertisements or just a marketing strategy; it also raises the issue of how well children understand and interpret such information.

Other television advertisements such as advertisements for toys may be less controversial than food advertising because toys do not have the same sort of health implications. Nonetheless, specific issues are associated with toy advertisements. For instance, parents may be concerned that toys are presented in an unrealistic or inaccurate way. In many countries, regulations or guidelines prohibit advertisers from making exaggerated claims about the properties of the toys being advertised (see chap. 9). Such rules might include presenting the toy in a context that shows its true size or making it clear how the toy is operated (e.g., by hand or by a power source), Advertisers may also be encouraged to say whether a toy needs to be assembled and, if so, whether an adult’s help is required. The issues here relate to how conscientiously advertisers adhere to any guidelines and, even if they do, whether children understand the disclosures associated with advertisements. For example, Muehling and Kolbe (1999) found that although many advertisements aimed at children included visual statements (usually in small print) disclosing information about a product, such statements were presented so briefly that they required, on average, a reading speed of 160 words per minute. But even if children can read such statements, whether they can understand them is not clear (Liebert, Sprafkin, Liebert, & Rubinstein, 1977).

As well as seeing advertisements for products that are aimed specifically at them, children may also see advertisements for other products—ones that cause concern, such as alcohol, tobacco, and medicines (Strasburger, 2001). The frequency of advertisements for such products depends on national regulations. For instance, tobacco advertising on television is not permitted in several countries, but children may well see brand names in programs that include sports sponsored by tobacco companies (Sparks, 1999). The effects of advertising such products might vary. Kunkel (2001) referred to the research into the influence of U.S. advertisements for medicine and concluded that such advertising had little effect on children’s beliefs about the effectiveness of different brands.

However, advertising other products might affect children and adolescents. This may be particularly the case when advertising associates products with lifestyles that are attractive to young people (Gunter & McAleer, 1997). Evidence shows that alcohol advertising does effect young people’s brand preference (even before they are regular drinkers) and that young people’s expectancies about alcohol are partly influenced by alcohol advertising (Grube & Wallack 1994). Not only might children see alcohol advertising that is aimed at adults, but some alcohol campaigns, using animated characters and catchphrases, often seem to be aimed at the youth market. In the same way, researchers have shown that tobacco sponsorship on television affects adolescents’ recall of cigarette brands (Hoek, Gendall, & Stockdale, 1993) and some cigarette advertisers have been accused of deliberately targeting young people in their advertising campaigns (Fox, Krugman, Fletcher, & Fischer, 1999). But despite the influence of tobacco and alcohol advertising on young people, it is difficult to separate the effects of specific advertising and the effects of portraying these products positively in most television broadcasting. As Gunter and McAleer (1997) pointed out, alcohol drinking is frequently shown in positive contexts including celebrations, parties, and eating out. In contrast, the negative effects of drinking, such as drunkenness or ill health, are depicted much less often. Even though several countries now limit the portrayal of cigarette smoking on television, older programs and films often show smoking as a common and acceptable social habit, and few programs refer to the negative effects of tobacco. In these ways, alcohol and tobacco are more often than not shown in a positive and attractive light even when they are not being specifically advertised.

There are also concerns about the way that products are presented to children. Advertisers naturally want to present their products in the most appealing way, and this might mean, for example, using celebrities to endorse a product. This can increase children’s liking for a product (Ross et al., 1984), but inevitably raises issues about children’s ability to realize that the celebrity is being paid for the endorsement and may, therefore, not be pro-viding an objective recommendation. More generally, the use of popular characters (whether real or fictional) from children’s programs may make it difficult for children to distinguish between advertisements and programs (Wilson & Weiss, 1992). The blurring of the program/advertisement distinction might be to the advantage of advertisers, especially in an age when some programs are so closely linked to products that the program itself becomes a vehicle for merchandising. For example, in the United Kingdom the BBC is a “noncommercial” channel but derives a large income from the sale of children’s toys and games based on BBC programs that have been specifically designed to include products aimed at children (Hind, 2003). But if blurring the distinction between programs and advertisements makes it harder for children to recognize when they are being targeted by marketers, this could be seen as a negative change in children’s television,

Marketers reinforce stereotypes when they use idealized images to promote products. For example, the family structure in many western countries has changed, and many contemporary children have very different family lifestyles from children of a generation ago (Hahlo, 1999). But this change is hardly reflected in advertising to children. De Chenecey (1999) argued that although a few television advertisements include atypical families and single parents, most portray happy nuclear families in which “mums use washing powder and dads use power tools” (p. 336). More generally, women in advertisements tend to be shown in the home and in family roles, and men are more often shown outside the home and have a wider variety of roles, especially more authoritative ones (Fox 1996), Though such families do not represent the experience of all children, there remains a lack of nontraditional families and ethnic minority families in advertising (De Chenecey, 1999).

Stereotyping can be harmful. To give one example, marketers use physically attractive people to advertise products (Downs & Harrison, 1985). According to Martin, Gentry, and Hill (1999), the use of attractive models may be based on the idea that people who are physically attractive are often believed to have other positive qualities, including intelligence, competence, integrity, potency, and concern for other people (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhaijani, & Longo, 1991). Therefore advertising a product using physically attractive models may help it to become linked to the other qualities that the viewer associates with physical beauty. However, using beautiful models in advertising can generate unachievable stereotypes.

Martin et al. (1999) found that magazine advertisements that included attractive models had the most influence on girls who had a poor body image themselves. On one hand, this means that such advertisements are effective vehicles for selling products, particularly to a group who may see some of those products as a way to improve their self-image. On the other hand, girls with poor body image may be especially vulnerable to images of physical beauty they view in advertisements. Such advertising may reinforce the pressures on young people to conform to ideals of beauty that are hard or impossible to achieve. As Connor and Armitage (2002) pointed out, there has been an “epidemic” of dieting over the last few decades and includes primary school children (Hill, Oliver, & Rogers, 1992). This, in turn, leads to the marketing of diet products, which although usually aimed at an older market, may also appeal to young children if they aspire to a particular body image. Though these aspirations may not be derived originally from images in advertisements, (because stereotypical images exist across all aspects of the media), advertisements can reinforce those stereotypes in some children and young people (Martin et al., 1999). The issue of stereotyping is discussed in more detail in chapters 2 and 7.

Young children are thought to be particularly vulnerable to advertising because they know less about the intent of advertisers and the process of creating an advertisement (Oates, Blades, Gunter, & Don, 2003). The assumption is that adults are less likely to be vulnerable to advertisements because they are aware that the purpose of adver...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• PREFACE
• 1 THE ISSUES ABOUT TELEVISION ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
• 2 THE NATURE OF ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
• 3 CHILDREN’S EARLY UNDERSTANDING OF TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS
• 4 ADVANCED UNDERSTANDING OF ADVERTISING
• 5 THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO STUDYING CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF ADVERTISEMENTS
• 6 ADVERTISING IMPACT: KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, AND VALUES
• 7 ADVERTISING INFLUENCE: CHOICE AND CONSUMPTION
• 8 THE INCIDENTAL INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING
• 9 ADVERTISING REGULATION AND RESEARCH
• 10 CONCLUDING COMMENTS
• REFERENCES