Effects
intended & unintended
An ad of Chivas Regal is meant for the adult
sector. Yet its impressive ad will surely
make a kid curious about the taste of it and
eager to experience the feel of it when it
runs through the veins. Thus ads concerned
with products and services appropriate to
the adult sector are found to have unintended
effect on the kids who come across them. An
advertising research is primarily focussed
on the observation of an ad’s effectiveness
solely based on a specific commercial objective
i.e. the intended purpose. And what goes unnoticed
are its unintended effects that are beyond
the commercial purpose of the ad. These include
the non-brand attitudes that are born from
the ad influence and start affecting ones
life; they are all about the behavioral effects
that are not manifest in consumption.
Blurring
divide
In many a case, however, the thin divide
between intended and unintended effects
of ads gets blurred. A study into a beer
advertising on television revealed that
the 10-13 year-old boys who exhibit a significant
awareness of beer advertising also possess
increased intentions to drink as an adult.
Though the manufacturers will, surely, never
say that their advertising is intended for
children, its effect upon them has been
to increase interest in their product category
that can only help them to safeguard their
future business. Surveys indicate that children
as young as two often develop brand preferences
that are equally influenced by parental
choice and the positive reinforcement of
advertising. And even the pre-school students
have been found to be sophisticated consumers
who understand the nature of advertising.
Demand
inducing effectiveness
According to a study conducted on commercials
in Channel One, advertising happens to have
a profound impact on the kids’ cognition
about advertised products, produces positive
effects for the brands advertised and ignites
their desire to possess the advertised products
- a clear demonstration of demand-inducing
effectiveness. Statistics supports a positive
relation between TV viewing and eating habits.
For example, munching chips and sipping
cola have become necessary parts of listening
to the toe-tapping numbers of MTV.
A nutritional study aimed at accounting
for the unhealthy eating habits of minors
found that TV advertising was a major detriment
of nutritional intake. They concluded that
if healthy foods were advertised as often
as unhealthy foods, the general health of
the children would have improved.
Creative
coding of advertising
An advertised product or service is encoded
with a symbolic imagery intended to communicate
something about a brand. When it reaches
us we decode the presented message and retain
a particular impression. If such an impression
is favourable and if it touches the target
audience more effectively than the others,
the advertising is deemed to be a success.
Imagery is open to interpretation. The symbols
used to encode advertisements do not have
one specific meaning and its interpretation
lies in the mind of the beholder. An ad
of a deodorant may denote freshness and
confidence to some, sensuality and closeness
to others. Marilyn Monroe may symbolize
beauty, scandal or tragedy. Thus, along
with selling things, advertisements also
create structures of meanings. During the
process of meaning transfer, the ad meaning
has to be successfully decoded by the viewer/reader.
It is entirely likely that the audience
may create meanings from advertising codes
that are not intended by the ad practitioners.
This suggests that there can be a potential
gap between the encoder’s intent and
decoder’s perception. This gap often
leads the children to absorb meaning from
the ads that extends beyond what is pertinent
to whatever is being advertised. This is
perceived to have an unforeseen effect on
juvenile minds and can thus be presented
as a practical anomaly with regards to the
purpose of advertising.
Source: The unintended effects of advertising
upon children, Preston, Christopher, International
Journal of Advertising, No. 18, 1999.
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Media
habits
A study on media habits of the kid sector can be
of immense benefit for
the
advertisers who vie with each other to grab a piece
of their fleeting attention. About 40 per cent of
the kids who were questioned claimed to read newspapers
and/or comics. Readership of daily publications
was found to increase with age and was found to
serve different intellectual needs for boys and
girls. Boys are found to spare only a fleeting glance
at the Page One and head for the sport page without
much delay. On the other hand, girls reserve quite
a lot of their attention for the front page and
other news stories and are known to have least interest
for sport.
Children have the maximum control on the TV remote
from 4.00 pm to 8.00 pm (after the school hours
and before the dinner time) which is, thus, the
best possible time to grab a child’s attention.
Cartoons appeal to the children the most. Animated
entertainment got a voting of 52 per cent in the
study. (See box: Orientation to TV ads among US
& Japanese teens)
Usage of computer and internet is steadily on the
rise among children. About 52 per cent of the kids
interrogated had used a computer in the past 3 months
and 8 per cent of them had surfed the Net. With
increase in age the usage of computer tends to rise.
About 32 per cent of the seven-year-olds questioned
used computers as opposed to 64 per cent of the
four-year-olds. Surprisingly, Net has emerged as
the second most important medium after TV for children.
Most of the children’s time spent online is
related to communication and entertainment. (At
times, it may also be for education. More than 30
per cent of kids in USA use the Net to complete
their homework.). According to Strauss, visuals
on the Net are as important as the contents are.
They help the children to feel and perceive the
site.
Looking for the best ways to aim promotions at children,
the survey revealed that TV is the best medium for
advertising contests and schemes and the telephone,
the best medium for entering into a contest. And
awards that appeal to the juvenile target audience
the most are vacations in foreign destinations and
personal computers.
Attitude
towards branding and advertising
Children are practically living in a “brandscape”,
brands being an integral part of their familiar
environment, and speak “brands” much more
than “products”. Kids of the present era
speak a dialect which is a little different - the
language of brands. Consumer attitudes are inherently
bi-dimensional because adult consumers purchase
goods and services for two basic reasons: (a) consummatory
affective (hedonic) gratification (from sensory
attributes) (b) instrumental, utilitarian reasons
concerned with “expectation on consequences”
(from functional and nonsensory attributes). Studies
indicate that children base their attitude towards
the brand firstly on the cognitively less taxing
hedonic dimension. Their relationship with the brand
seems to be primarily an affective link. And these
emotional ties certainly play an important role
in the choice of a brand and also in the brand-loyalty
patterns. For children, brands are presumably endowed
with an array of meanings that largely overflow
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Usage
of computer and internet is steadily on the
rise among children. About 52 per cent of
the kids interrogated had used a computer
in the past 3 months and 8 per cent of them
had surfed the Net
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Advertisers
targeting kids have an immediate advantage
because kids love to receive messages about
the products they like. They love free games
and gifts; they love to participate in contests
and win prizes
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the
functional and utilitarian aspect. (See box: Unintended
effects of ads on kids)
Kids are now the perfect audience for promotion. Advertisers
targeting kids have an immediate advantage because
kids love to receive messages about the products they
like. They love free games and gifts; they love to
participate in contests and win prizes. And all these
can make them feel that the brands care about them.
Research shows that children appreciate humor in advertisements.
It also reveals that as they grow up, kids convert
from “ad acceptors” (who continue to watch
the same channel or do other things in the same room)
to “ad-avoiders” (who surf other channels
or leave the room). Some gender-based difference in
tastes should also be reckoned with in this regard.
For instance, boys are attracted to ads that feature
their favourite sports personality. On the other hand,
girls are charmed by their favourite actors and actresses.
Kids love ads that are colourful, they prefer those
commercials that feature other children or show a
closely-knit family. And they also enjoy being informed
about the new things of life. These characteristic
features not only interest and excite children but
also reinforce brand recognition by associating a
product or service with an easy-to-remember icon or
an image.
In the New Generation 2001 survey most of the findings
revealed after interviewing 3253 children and 735
mothers from all socio-economic categories in 14 Indian
cities indicate that consumerism has now walked from
the stock markets into our bedrooms to clutter the
minds of our little ones. By virtue of their basic
instinct, children are creators of their own meanings
as they grow and assimilate information and experiences
to make sense of the outside world. And more so under
the influence of the ads that not only sell their
brands, but also peddle dreams, sell lifestyles, create
role models who shape the aspirations of the kids
and tempt them with glimpses of a glamour world which
might often be beyond their reach. Little is known
about the psychological mechanism by which attitudes
operate in children that prompt them to demand goods,
pester and coax their parents and compel them to succumb
to their insistence.
The
above article has been condensed / abstracted from
the following papers all of whose rights are reserved.
1. The unintended effects of advertising upon children,
Preston, Christopher, International Journal of Advertising,
No. 18, 1999.
2. Orientations to TV advertising among adolescents
& children in the US & Japan, Sherry, John,
Greenberg, Bradley and Tokinoya, Hiroshi, International
Journal of Advertising, No 18, 1999]
3. Children and Attitude toward the brand: a new
measurement scale, Pecheux, Claude, Derbaix, Christian,
Journal of advertising Research, July-August 1999
4. Kids play, Rodrigues, Malika, Brand Equity, August
23-29, 2000
5. The kids are all right, Kukreja, Shalini, Brand
Equity, January
16, 2002
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