Advertising - the curse of modern times?

I remember reading Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders in the 60s or 70s, when he was criticising the growth of advertising, especially the subliminal type then in use. It's big business and big money. I'd like to think that we could and should teach our children to be wary and sceptical of advertisements, but it's ubiquitous and those very children are used as targets. It's very depressing to see the amount of sweets, biscuits, sugary cereals and other junk foods that crop up in adverts. No one seems to be advertising cauliflower!

Perhaps parents should address it with their children. Don't leave it all to the teachers!

I think advertising that targets young children should be banned - after all, it was done for cigarettes.

vegasmags Subliminal advertising has always been illegal in the UK.

The Hidden Persuaders was printed in 1957 - and my school must have been very forward, as we read it then - and I have been very much aware of the effects of advertising ever since!

I turn the sound off in the breaks if not on BBC, my sister records programmes so as to eliminate them.

I wish I could get my daughter to realise that they do have an effect....after all why would the advertisers spend so much money if they didn't? She has grown up with them and seems to think they are just part of TV.....

I used to sit with my DSs and deconstruct TV ads with them. Oddly enough one of them later did a business degree with a marketing diploma.

I too read Vance Packard in the 1960, in fact I think we still have the book on our bookshelves somewhere. However since then I think most people. including children have become very sophisticated in understanding advertisements and what they are doing. That is why the advertisers use psychologists, neuro scientists etc etc to help them produce ad campaigns, we are a lot harder to sell to. Advertising will anyway always be with us. How can manufacturers sell goods if puchasers do not know they are available and where?

The answer I think lies with ourselves. We do not have to respond to adverts and we do not have to buy our children/GC the items they ask for when they see them advertised. When my children asked for things they saw advertised on television I just said 'no' and told them why and like AD we used to deconstruct the ads when we did see them.

DD commented recently that she had an unmaterialistic upbringing, which somewhat took me by surprise as we were fortunate to be reasonably comfortably off so she didnt lack things in her childhood, but I have always been brand averse, partly because I had read Vance Packard, partly because I find shopping boring, partly because I have a tendency to be frugal so that things like bikes, furniture and cars were almost always second hand.

I do believe the topic is taught in schools. However I fear that advertising is very subtle and we are so seeped in its culture that they are winning. Children cotton on easily to how pressured advertising is, especially at Christmas but this doesn't stop the 'wanting' in us all.

But generally the products I see advertised arent things I want and even when I enjoy a witty clever advert, I remember the advert, but I rarely remember the brand and occasionally cannot even remember the product.

I am not suggesting that I am immune to advertising. I have responded to adverts where they have told me about products I have been looking for or can see a use for. And seeing adverts draws names to your attention to brands so that if I wanted comparative quotes for house insurance I would be likely to go to a site I had heard of and I would be likely to have heard it through advertising on the television or radio.

Children's responses to advertising will be formed by their parents attitudes. If their parents do not respond to children pestering them to buy things seen on television they will eventually stop asking. When my children were small I never once bought them sweets at a supermarket till. Because I never did it they never pestered me because they knew in advance what my response would be.

Flickety I agree that children's responses to adverts are often affected by parental attitudes and behaviour. I think, though, that you're assuming that all people are well informed about the psychological devices that are used to induce people to buy - and of how information is often presented to give a false impression. As a tutor in an adult literacy class, I often found examples of people not being able to "read between the lines" or even understand the clever ways in which some claims made for products - whilst not untrue - are misleading. I'm sure such misunderstandings don't just apply to people with literacy issues.

Research has shown that children as young as 4 can immediately identify famous brands, and this rampant hyping-up of consumerism is damaging to children in particular and society as a whole.

A look at these findings from Unicef[ www.unicef.org.uk/Media-centre/Press-releases/Research-shows-UK-children-caught-in-materialistic-trap/] shows that unfortunately many UK children are unhappy and want to spend more quality time rather than being bought off with presents.

The whole consumerist thrust of our society is so intense that I do not believe that parents, however well intenioned and well informed, can withstand this alone. Interestingly, Sweden continues to ban advertisements aimed at young children, recognising their vulnerability, but Swedish parents also prioritise family time over the acquisition of material possessions.

Being able to identify brands is not the same as wanting them or feeling you need to own the products and I feel this applies as much to children as to adults.

As with everything some families provided loving but toxic backgrounds for their children. I do think one of the good sides of the current recession is now people are less well off and prioritising debt repayment over spending, they are looking at how they spend their money and more are just deciding that owning evrything is the way to misery rather than happiness.

Being able to identify brands is the royal road to wanting them, feeling you need to own them and feeling deprived if you can't have them. Advertising is about the creation of demand for stuff we generally don't need.

vegasmags My view entirely. If branding wasn't useful for creating a demand, millions of pounds wouldn't be spent on it.

FlicketyB No doubt you're right and the recession will encourage people to spend their money more wisely. However, we live in a society where we are constantly encouraged to buy stuff we don't need. If people stop buying, the politicians and media pundits throw their hands up in horror and say we must restore "consumer confidence". There seems to be some ambiguity in this approach. On the one hand, people are being urged to keep buying in order to prop up the economy and on the other criticized for getting into debt.

This is an advert too - but I,m sure you will like it.


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Granny23 A barrow-load of for your link.

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