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.

Perhaps I am a little bit late in answering... still I believe that I should vent my opinion on this...

I have liked the first series of Primeval (ITV) and stopped watching it since they killed my favourite character Capt; Ryan in the final episode of the first series. He was attacked by a monster - dragged along for a while and mortally wounded - dying of his wounds.
I watched it on our Belgian TV who showed it late on Friday evenings (after the 10 o'clock news) so when I started to re-search the series and cast on internet I was surprised to learn that ITV had made as a family show good for kids to see. When the series whas shown on BBC America the producers where interviewed and one of them said in this interview. 'When ITV learned we were going to make a 'monster a week show for kids & family' they only gave us one rule 'to kill no pets'!!! But killing human characters - kids have come to know and/or love - that was okay? When I talk about that on other forums there were surprisingly many members who had no clue it was a family show because of the voilence and monsters killing people!!! In latter interviews the writer of the series stated that he didn't like the idea of Star Trek where only un-named characters got killed and no-one of the main characters. As he wanted to keep the viewers on edge as they now realised that in Primeval any of the characters could be killed... is that how someone should deal with 'kid shows'? As when series two ended (I haven't seen it) yet another main character was killed and at a convention in London earlier this year the same person hinted that yet another main character would get killed by the end of the next (third) series to be shown latter this year on ITV.
So I wonder how ITV really deals with 'kid or family shows' - as I feel its a bit strange they won't allow 'pets to be killed' but killing humans is all right? SO next time someone's kid is killed we should try to comfort them by saying 'thank God its not your pet?'
Strange that most don't even worry about this as I know that the series did get high ratings in the UK and does well on BBC America...

Ad's are having great impact not only on children but on the elders too.We too got influenced some times from the product and get ready to get it.Then we can't blame on children only as its a natural phenomenon that they got easily attracted towards the thing.So its up to the parents that how they handle them

well brock, todays kids are much more advanced and up to date about new ads and products. Best way to handle ur child is to discuss everything with him and also ask for suggestions then they feel more responsible and automatically come close to the parents.