Students Take on Corporate Advertising

Albuquerque, N.M. -- Kara McDermott was appalled by the advertisement for Game Boy in a children's magazine. The ad featured skeletal hands holding the electronic toy with a caption suggesting a player might be having too much fun to remember to eat.

Kara, a seventh-grader, said she was particularly offended by what she perceived as the inference that youngsters could get all the exercise they needed by sitting on the couch for hours on end, playing with a toy.

Kara, who is studying media literacy this year at Desert Ridge Middle School, entered her critique of the ad in the third annual BadAd Contest and won first prize in the middle school division.

Sponsored by the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, the contest asks students in grades five through 12 to target an advertisement they find misleading or offensive and then analyze it in a 700-word essay. More than 200 entries were received this year, according to contest coordinator Rob Williams.

"I think there's grass-roots interest afoot in the United States to do more media literacy," said Williams, a teacher who is also director of curriculum for the Literacy Project.

Kara heard about the contest through her media literacy teacher, Nan Czaja. A former advertising employee who eventually turned her back on the industry, Czaja said a light really goes on for students when they understand the techniques behind the business of selling.

"It connects right into them," she said from her classroom in Albuquerque. "They're at the age of conformity. Media literacy says, 'I can do something against the system that's harmless and saves me money.'"

Contestants were asked to identify which techniques of persuasion were used in the ad they selected, to pay attention to technical effects and to identify the story the ad was trying to tell its target audience and the marketing strategy behind it.

"It's amazing what these advertisers do to try and get into our minds," said Kara. "I'm seeing things that I never saw before." Getting children to buy things they don't need is a particularly distasteful goal of the industry, she added.

But it was the health angle that caught her attention when her younger brother first showed her the Game Boy ad, Kara said. Health care specialists have criticized these kinds of toys for robbing children of time they would otherwise spend getting exercise.

In her essay she wrote, "I've never seen a Boy Scout badge for catching a Pikachu," referring to a character in Pokemon, a popular game played on a Game Boy.

Kara will receive $100 and a book on media literacy for her efforts. In the high school division, David Brashear of San Jose, Calif., won for his essay on the Virginia Slims ad "Find Your Voice."

David, a senior at Bellarmine College Prep, said he selected the tobacco ad because it implied smoking would help young women find love and happiness when in fact it was bad for their hearts and lungs.

Like Kara, David completed the essay as an assignment for a media literacy class and said he now views advertisements in a different light. "I kind of deconstruct ads when I look at them," he said. "Before, I didn't do that.

"I think it's important because we're in contact with the media all the time and don't pay much attention to what we're watching and reading."

Contacts: Rob Williams, BadAd coordinator, Albuquerque Academy, Albuquerque, N.M., 505-858-8870. Nan Czaja, teacher, Kara McDermott, BadAd winner, Desert Ridge Middle School, Albuquerque, N.M., 505-857-9282. David Brashear, through teacher Mike Henry, Bellarmine College Prep, San Jose, Calif., 408-294-9224.