Advertising to Children

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,7, Macquarie University, course: Media Cultures, language: English, abstract: Advertising on Television is still the most common and significant way of transporting messages to people and particularly to children in view of affecting their intent to buy. The Nielsen Media Research found out that, very young children as early as age two, watch television more than three hours per day, (1998, in Singer & Singer, 2001, p.15) which makes the subject of how children understand advertising messages and what they do with these messages an important topic. The producers of advertising campaigns have still noticed the importance of children as a target group and the significant influence on their parents' purchases. Furthermore children are 'consumers of tomorrow', consequently companies have to create awareness of their products and create preferences as well as brand loyalty in the very early stages of children's consumerism. Therefore it is an interesting topic to consider if commercials have an effect on children and if so, what they do with these messages. It is important to focus on the factors which have an influence on building up the mind of children. However, since this topic is very complex and the opinions differ, it is not possible to point out one general point of view. Every child is an individual with a different family background and an individual behaviour. Firstly it is significant to look at some general properties of a successful campaign and the increasing influence of children on their parents purchase. To find an assertion why children are strongly influenced, it will be briefly looked at how many advertisings an average child watched. Furthermore, another crucial point is how and to which extent television advertising does influence children on their brand perceptions. This essay will discuss how children understand television advertising and what they do with the message they get from it. For that reason it is essential to know and analyse the process of consumer socialization which will be mentioned afterwards. It will be considered how the family, the school, peer groups and the mass media influence a child.