BORN TO BUY

1. BORN TO BUY SOME MAJOR THEMES

2. Introduction-Background- Overspent • Overspent: Luxury replaced comfort • Americans pressured to keep up with “basics” as well as luxuries (branded goods, SUVs, recreation) • Preoccupied with getting and spending, shopping

3. Few “downshifters” among parents, because: • Children as conduits from consumer marketplace into the household • Young people passionate consumers • Young people as repositories of consumer knowledge and awareness

4. Children as Consumers • Brands and products determine who is “in” or “out” or who is “hot” , who deserves to have friends or social status • (so, why would parents try downshifting?)

5. Major Shift: Marketing to Children • Marketplace has been “re-made” • 80% of global brands require a “tween” strategy • 40% of urban tweens (worldwide) are strongly attached to particular car brands • 30% of parents ask for advice

6. Childhood • Corporations have infiltrated core activities and institutions of childhood • (advertising in schools) • Electronic media replacing conventional play

7. Childhood Commercialized • USA teens: brand oriented, consumer involved, materialistic (most of all generations in history) • USA teens: 75% want to be rich, 61% want to be famous • Most USA teens “bonded to brands”

8. However, Problems: • Rising Obesity • Attention Deficit Disorder • Addiction to electronic games • Teasing & bullying in schools • Anxiety increase, fear and pressure for tweens

9. Generational Changes • Today=higher degree of immersion in consumer culture • Changes in childhood=more exposure to adult worlds, sometimes more responsibility • Disappearance of childhood?

10. Loss of “childhood” • Decline in children’s games • Early sexual activity • Drug and alcohol use • Eroticazation of children through beauty pageants, fashion

11. Changing “model” • Children now autonomous and empowered consumers • Previously, a “gatekeeper” model (marketers appealed to mom as to what was good for child)

12. Changing Patterns • Logo recognition at 18 mos • 2 years=asking for brand names • By 3 or 3 ½ belief that brands communicate personal qualities • First grader knows 200 brands

13. Changing Patterns • By 6 or 7 girls asking for latest fashions, using nail polish, singing pop music tunes • 8 year old boys enjoying Budweiser commercials, World Wrestling Entertainment, and violent video games

14. As they age, turn to teen culture • Saturated with violence, alcohol, drugs and guns • Gratuitous sexuality (unrealistic body images) gender stereotypes, materialism • Pressure to conform

15. 8 and 9 year olds • Watch MTV and BET • Watching 3 ½ hrs of TV a day

16. 10 year olds • Have memorized 300 to 400 brands • “stick with a brand” • Brand names have become pure symbols (detached from a specific product)

17. Child Psyche According to the Marketers • Growth or developmental model • Belief in an immanent process of unfolding product needs • Have “naturalized” childhood (reification)

18. Beliefs about children: • Consumer desires are natural • Timeless emotional needs • Products should be matched to needs

19. 1st need=gender differentiation • Boys want power, action, to succeed, • Girls want glamour, to display femininity

20. 2nd need=success & mastery • Ads show challenging games and toys, where children are portrayed achieving and winning • For boys, getting rich, becoming the boss, beating out the competition (from need to succeed)

21. 3rd need=sensory stimulation • Oreo cookie leads to a tsunami of crème (ad) • Product is a trigger for over-satisfying kids’ senses

22. 4th need=love • Skewed toward girls and the younger children • Stuffed animals, sweet looking dolls, rounded objects • Translates the desire for love into concrete objects, shapes, music

23. Fear=children need to overcome fear • (however, scaring children may backfire…source of nightmares etc)

24. Marketing of Cool • Cool is something every product tries to be and every kid needs to have • Cool as key to social success (who belongs, who is popular, who is accepted by peers

25. Principles of Cool • 1. Socially exclusive (expensive) • 2. Being older than one’s age • 3. Anti-adult sensibility • 4. The Taboo, the forbidden. At the edge, edgy, pushing the edge

26. Nickelodeon & the anti-adult bias • With MTV—kids are cool and adults are not • MTV=teen rebellion against parents • MTV-Nickelodeon trickle down

27. Kids Rule • Anti authoritarian • Us vs them • “how to make the substitute teacher screech” • “sliming the teacher” • Adults are the bothersome, nerdy, embarrassing the repressive

28. Kids Rule (2) • When it comes to fashion class the principal is a flunkie • Adults impose a joyless world • Adult world is drab, regimented, borring

29. Video games • For boys a form of empowerment through “Oedipal rebellion” and rejection of home environments

30. Advertisers and Parents • Advertisers make fun of parents • Have “kicked out” the parents • Parents are creeps, teachers are nerds and idiots, authority figures are laughable • Nobody can understand kids except the corporations • product, not the parent, on your side

31. Advertising to Children • Age Compression • Dual Messaging • Pester Power • Trans-Toying

32. Selling kids on junk food, drugs and violence • Junk food is bulk of advertising dollar • Food ads are kids favorite ads (Pepsi, Coke, Snickers, McDonald’s and Hostess)

33. Food marketing • Follows model of “timeless needs” • Empowering (Mom may not like it) • Trans toying (changing colors)

34. Food ads • Dangerously close to association with drugs (sugar’s jolt), getting hyper • Cheetos=addictive drug metaphor (officially hooked, crave)

35. Alcohol Ads • Some ads kids are more likely to see than adults (times) • Smoking & alcohol use are more prevalent in film and TV than in real world • Children more like to smoke or drink when exposed to ads

36. Selling Violence • Playing video games was positively related to aggressive behavior and delinquency