There is a thin line between what is right and what is wrong when t comes to ethics in advertising. Advertising agencies are always being pushed to the limit. They are forced to be innovative, creative, and always a step ahead. When developing an ad campaign the objective is to grab your target audience. Sometimes, to do so an agency may have to push the limits a little and test the waters. Here is where I am when it comes to right and wrong.
Some feel that advertising to small children is wrong but to me the idea of advertising to small children is something I consider very clever as long as it’s done smart. Grabbing a consumer at a young age and forcing a brands identity into their memories creates a long lasting subconscious brand/consumer loyalty. Although not yet understanding of this the young consumer will forever be magnetized to this specific brand that successfully gained their loyalty. And then comes in the nag factor. Companies can often times leave it to the children to nag their folks until they get what they want. If the world was meant to make parenting easy than there would be no need for parenting!
Now on the other end of things, say that a brand like Camel cigarettes were slowly falling out of the market and their only hope is to reinvent themselves. This brand decides to target a younger consumer, one who is naive to negative effects of a cigarette. The brand tries to do this in a subliminal kind of way. The commercial they create looks to be targeted to adults, it seems that that is who they are talking to but, in actuality it is grabbing the attention of small children. In doing so, bright contrasting colors are being used and a cartoon camel is doing all the talking. Now if a child sees a cool looking animated camel smoking a cigarette what do you think they are going to want to try? A cigarette! Oh…but if I remember correctly this has already been done. By who? The Camel brand! I would blame the ad agency that created this ad but truthfully they were just doing what was asked of them. I blame the owners of the brand for choosing the ad itself. I’m sure the agency sat down with the brand rep and went over many of their ideas before settling on one. Obviously morals were nowhere present in this decision.
So when it comes down to it I think that marketing to children is okay, as long as the product that is being marketed is not harmful.
Some feel that advertising to small children is wrong but to me the idea of advertising to small children is something I consider very clever as long as it’s done smart. Grabbing a consumer at a young age and forcing a brands identity into their memories creates a long lasting subconscious brand/consumer loyalty. Although not yet understanding of this the young consumer will forever be magnetized to this specific brand that successfully gained their loyalty. And then comes in the nag factor. Companies can often times leave it to the children to nag their folks until they get what they want. If the world was meant to make parenting easy than there would be no need for parenting!
Now on the other end of things, say that a brand like Camel cigarettes were slowly falling out of the market and their only hope is to reinvent themselves. This brand decides to target a younger consumer, one who is naive to negative effects of a cigarette. The brand tries to do this in a subliminal kind of way. The commercial they create looks to be targeted to adults, it seems that that is who they are talking to but, in actuality it is grabbing the attention of small children. In doing so, bright contrasting colors are being used and a cartoon camel is doing all the talking. Now if a child sees a cool looking animated camel smoking a cigarette what do you think they are going to want to try? A cigarette! Oh…but if I remember correctly this has already been done. By who? The Camel brand! I would blame the ad agency that created this ad but truthfully they were just doing what was asked of them. I blame the owners of the brand for choosing the ad itself. I’m sure the agency sat down with the brand rep and went over many of their ideas before settling on one. Obviously morals were nowhere present in this decision.
So when it comes down to it I think that marketing to children is okay, as long as the product that is being marketed is not harmful.
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