Children see some 10,000 TV ads a year and recognise 400 brands by age 10, Children's Secretary Ed Balls says, in announcing a government inquiry into the possible harmful effects of advertising upon children. I confidently predict the study will show that, among the effects of advertising upon children, some can be considered harmful. The money (our money) can be saved and put to a better purpose just by Mr Balls reading this intro. In May this year we were met with the bizarre scenario of the German Advertising Association (seconded by their UK counterparts, no less) making the case to Brussels that, actually, ads to kids don't really work very well at all - this in knee-jerk response to the European Parliament's Directive that member states must clamp down upon the advertising of HFSS products (high in fat, salt or sugar). The words turkeys, voting and Christmas spring seasonally to mind.
The idea that advertising may not work is as old as it is ridiculous. Sure... lots of advertising doesn't work very WELL, and some advertising is so bad that it unsells the product... but most ads and marketing communications are pretty darned effective when evaluated on a pound-spent-per-person basis. I see it working every day - but if my eyes are deceiving me, then there's one hell of a lot of CEOs out there who need the sack for frittering away their shareholders' funds on frivolous foreign shoots and costly campaigns.
Flying by flapping your arms doesn't cut the mustard, and in consequence we don't have a worldwide industry populated by hundreds of thousands of people dedicated to its promulgation. Marketing communications, on the other hand... now, isn't the clue in the scale and all-pervasiveness of this business?
I find it extraordinary that the same people who can't wait to have themselves photographed in front of the latest (election) campaign poster, scratch their heads perplexedly when it comes to something as simple as advertising to children. Why do they think the ads are scheduled at times when kids will be watching? Have they any kids of their own?... have they not noticed that kids' brains are many times more receptive and perceptive than the old overloaded congealed lumps of porridge swilling around in their own skulls? A Liverpool University study on food advertising recently demonstrated that obese and overweight children increase their food intake by more than 100% after watching food ads on TV. (There should be no surprise here, although it’s an interesting statistic.)
Our kids swim in a swirling sea of sales messages. Mr Balls’ figure of 10,000 ads per annum is probably grossly conservative (and why not?) – as far back as 1997 studies were coming up with an upper estimate of 40,000. And, to stretch the metaphor, that’s arguably just the tip of an inverted iceberg of communications emanating from friends, family, social circles and media. Children are programmed from conception to absorb and learn from the stimuli they receive; admittedly less so to differentiate between what society deems are the positive and negative effects. But to spend taxpayers’ money to prove this point seems… well… pointless.
