Attacking the "Best" in Kiddie Ads

September 14 -- A spread in Advertising Age, the industry's primary trade magazine, shows a grainy picture of an inquisitive preteen girl. "Who Am I?" the copy asks, suggesting the girl's existential coming-of-age dilemma. But the next page tells us exactly who she is: "I am the Internet generation. I am spending billions each year. I am building brands right now." Then the kicker: "And I am here for you."

Indeed, the prospect of millions of kids handing over a chunk of the $400 billion they represent in annual sales has corporations salivating to the tune of $12 billion a year in advertising and marketing. Over three hundred industry professionals showed up in New York this week to discuss the finer points of roping in this highly lucrative market at the "Advertising and Promoting to Kids" conference, an annual event sponsored by Toronto-based KidScreen.

The two-day conference had participants from heavy-hitter advertising firms like Ogilvy & Mather and Leo Burnett listening with perked ears to seminars like "Ethnic Marketing: It's Not So Niche!", "Marketing in the Classroom" and the astonishingly blunt "Guerrilla Marketing: How to Get Street Cred."

The conference culminated on Thursday with the Golden Marble awards, which recognized the best in advertising to kids -- "best" meaning ads that best "educate, inform and entertain" according to official conference jargon, but in reality seemed to be those that best yield the coveted "pester power" which keeps kids nagging and parents buying. Big winners at the Golden Marble Awards included Leo Burnett, which won two golds and four certificates of merit for spots on Kellogg's, McDonald's and Nintendo, and other firms for their campaigns for Gatorade and Kids Foot Locker.

But outside the ceremony, vocal protesters were demonstrating against the non-stop propoganda machine that was appluading itself inside. A coalition of health care professionals, educators, media activists, children's advocates and parents who hailed from as far away as California, Alabama, Chicago and Boston had come together as the newly formed Save Children from Advertising and Marketing (SCAM) Project. SCAM believes that the average American child's media diet of forty hours a week, including 30,000 television ads a year, spells dangerous brainwashing for the kids -- and red-handed guilt for the advertisers.

"It was for many years a tacit understanding that children ought not to be bombarded with commercial messages," said Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media ecology at New York University and outspoken media critic. "There were certainly a number of television shows geared toward children but they weren't about selling products. In today's climate of rampant deregulation and hypercommercialization, the fact is that these companies and advertisers are engaged in a huge propaganda exercise whose sole purpose is to raise corporate margins. Anyone who's really concerned about what they call family values really ought to be directing attention to this trend."

The demonstrators expressed particular alarm over the early age at which advertisers now target kids, mentioning industry reports that proclaim children as young as 18 months psychologically available for marketing.

"For little kids, the world is what they see, and they can't distinguish between an ad, a TV show and reality" said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor of education at Lesley College and mother of screen actor Matt Damon. Carlsson-Paige cited research showning that until the age of seven, children cannot differentiate between commercials and shows. "All they see is something colorful to watch, so they're desensitized to ads before they even learn to put them into context. That's what we need to get people dialoguing about."