Hi, I am studying Media Studies in 6th form and am in my final year.

As part of my coursework i'm having to do some critical research on my chosen topic of children and television.

My main focus is: 'To what extent do adverts influence pester power?' ie How much do adverts influence children to ask for things?

If I could get some opinions from people, that would be great and much appreciated.

Many thanks

I must say advertisements have a HUGE impact on kids. They go so far as to show the extreme fun you can have with their toys or eating their cereal. My son is only 3 & he's already pointing at the television, wanting what's on the latest commercial. I know it's only going to get worse as he, & my 2 year old daughter get older .

I'll bite, but only if you promise to quote me directly in your paper... in fact, I'll write the paragraph for you:

MajorNougat, the hyper-intelligent poster at the Metacritic Forums, states that "Advertising must have a very strong influence over children. Otherwise, companies would not pour billions of dollars into it. They've clearly done much more research into it than any regular forum member or even a Media Studies student. Consider a company like McDonalds. They barely even advertise to adults. They rope kids in at an early age, knowing kids are far more capable of drawing adults into their restaurant then advertisements geared towards adults are. Ronald McDonald and the Hamburgler are obvious examples, not to mention toys with happy meals. Also, I can remember when I was a kid, I badly wanted a game called 'Crossfire'(do they still have that game?), because the advertisement was so cool: 'Crossfire, CROSSFIRE, CROSSFIIIIRRREEEE'. My parents never caved to buying it for me, but I played it at a friend's house. It kind of sucked."

Ok, that's all I've got. I'd recommend looking into arguments made in the Joe Camel case as well. Anywho, now that I've answered your question to the best of my ability, I've got a question for you

How do anonymous posters on an internet forum classify as "critical research"? I mean, do our opinions actually mean anything in the face of real critical research, from actual experts? I didn't take any media studies courses in college, but I'm willing to bet that many many volumes have been written on this subject.

I swear I'm not trying to be an ass when I ask this(or else I wouldn't have answered the question in the first place), but I am curious.

Good luck with your paper

Hey, MN, I agree with you that you are major-intelligent, and you're also major-flippant (not a dirty phrase), so that means that you and I are the same person!!

The difference is that I have a kid who I don't even have to teach about advertising (at least not TV, Radio, Newspaper Ads; Internet, that might be a Yikes!) She already knows that it's all BS. Since she's a painter/drawer/photographer/videographer/cartoonist/multi-mediaist, her major criteria is whether something has an "aesthetic value". Yeah, she wants to buy things, but they aren't caused by her exposure to Mass Media (capital letters mean all the difference!)

Now, what did I just go off-topic about?

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
that means that you and I are the same person!!

Ah, I'm sorry FKA, but you're going to have to pass the prize of "MajorNougat's Favorite Metacritic Poster" to mark f for now. A few more Mitch Hedberg quotes, and you might regain the crown.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all your replies, they will help me a lot.

We have to carry out primary and secondary research within our critical research and I'll use all your opinions in my primary research. I am aware of the faults which come with message boards and forums (perhaps people may lie or exaggerate) but it still counts as primary research as far as the exam board is concerned.

Thanks again!

quote:

Also, I can remember when I was a kid, I badly wanted a game called 'Crossfire'(do they still have that game?), because the advertisement was so cool: 'Crossfire, CROSSFIRE, CROSSFIIIIRRREEEE!"

Haha, that's hilarious. I had that game when I was a kid, and I will always remember the commercial for it.

Media is currently the greatest power on earth. Every kid on earth is persuaded by the media into believing that, whether they want to or not, they like the new fad and must get everything they can from it.
A good example is Pokemon. The thought of 151 colorful monsters that you can catch was big. So big, that the title itself is worth millions of dollars alone. At its height, the toy profits were almost one billion.
So TV has a major effect on what kids do and say. Do you think people would think stealing cars and illegally doing things were cool without the influence of characters such as "XXX"?

Sweet... here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M-WmQWEJRo

Mark, you might not want to let your daughter see this... even she might fall prey to the advertising genius(and yeah, I know she's 15 and the game is intended for 8 year old boys... it just doesn't matter).

We're probably going to lose more cool points, but my wife, daughter and I play no video or computer games whatsoever. I used to play bridge, but I lost the CD!

I realize that ad is ancient and isn't for a computer game, but my daughter would probably think that song was "fill in the pejorative", but thanks for thinking about us, and I'm going to open Pandora's Box by showing it to her.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
I used to play bridge, but I lost the CD!

Sounds like you should've had a second kid.

quote:

my daughter would probably think that song was "fill in the pejorative"

Say what you want of the song, but it was totally in my top 5 of 1989.

Thank you for sharing that! You went to sleep singing that, and maybe you loved G.I. Joe too, right? Do you remember the G.I. Joe fight song?

Didn't think so. Does anybody? Not me. I'm NO FUN!!

I went to sleep singing that song, clutching my stuffed ninja turtle, and clinging to my security blanket... oh wait, I still do that.

No, I didn't love GI Joe. I only liked it.

"TV is Lucifer's Dream Box"

coupled with

"If anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. No joke here, really, seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalization for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself, now. Now! Back to the show! ... Seriously, I know all the marketing people are gonna be like, "There's gonna be a joke coming up!" There's no fucking joke: suck a tailpipe, hang yourself, borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something to rid the world of your evil fucking presence. OK, back to the show. ... You know what bugs me though, that everyone here who's in marketing is now thinking the same thing: "Oh, cool, Bill's going for that Anti-Marketing dollar. That's a huge market!" Quit it! Don't turn everything into a dollar sign, please! ..."Oohh, the plea for sanity dollar. Huge! Huge market! Look at our research."

coupled with the embryonic deductive reasoning of children should pretty much give you my view.