90510
Marketing to Kids
Just the other day I read an interesting article. A group is threatening
to sue McDonald's unless they remove the toy from their Happy Meals.
Their reasoning is such: McDonald's is tricking kids into eating fatty
foods.
My first thought was Whhaaattt??? When did we become a nation that was
incapable of telling our kids “no”? My second thought was, hmmmn. They
might just have a point.
Companies spend billions of dollars every year on their brands to
entice, entertain and enlighten customers. They hire people whose job it
is to get into the psyche of the target demographic and make them think
they simply cannot go one more minute without obtaining this product.
Kids are especially impressionable. Don’t think so? Take your 4-year-old
to the grocery store, and I guarantee they won’t reach for the Safeway
branded cereal.
We are bombarded daily with advertising, so much so that we think we
tune most of it out. But there it is. When you are faced with a decision
of what plumber/electrician/HVAC company to call, are you going select a
name you’ve heard of, or randomly choose someone off page 6 of a Google
search? No one is immune, not you, not your friends, and definitely not
your kids.
As human beings we all have something pretty special, the capability
called “free will.” Yes, we can be persuaded that buying a certain kind
of beer because the opposite sex will suddenly find us more attractive
or purchasing a Happy Meal for the fun toy is the way to go. But in the
end, we need to take the information we have been given and use it to
make informed decisions. In other words, it is UP TO US. As parents,
guardians, aunts, uncles, friends, grandparents, it is UP TO US to raise
the next generation with the same capabilities. Otherwise we will
eventually end up needing to be protected from ourselves.
While I agree in theory with not marketing unhealthy lifestyles to kids,
I disagree that I need someone to choose for me by putting up a privacy
fence to keep out the big bad wolf called a McDonald's Happy Meal.
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
