Advertising to kids is an issue that has been debated both ways over the years. There is no obvious solution to this problem. This paper attempts to analyze this issue; discuss pros and cons of advertising to children; attempts to identify obstacles in implementing regulations and finally makes some recommendations and guidelines for the governments of various nations. First, here are some pros and cons of advertising to kids from different stakeholder’s perspectives:
| Pluses for Corporations | Minuses for Corporations |
| · Kids are an easy target from selling perspective as they can be influence themselves and influence their parents, siblings and/or friends. · Powerful media to reach out to masses · Create possible future loyal customers | · Kids can be temperamental and an ad can have a negative effect. It can spread virally and can generate a negative publicity for the company. · Difficulties in advertising only facts and no room for interpretation |
| Pluses for Parents | Minuses for Parents |
| · Great learning opportunity for kids about some educational topics, sensitive topics · Get to know new products that the kids like | · Cannot determine ahead of time whether the ad is good or bad for their kids · Children may be misguided by the ads · Kids’ choices can affect family economy |
| Pluses for the advertisement media | Minuses for the advertisement media |
| · Allowing ads catered to young audience generates higher revenues | · The social responsibility and profits are inversely proportional |
Having looked at the good and the bad, many countries have in fact regulated the advertising to kids in varying degrees. Greece bans toy advertising on televisions between 7 AM & 10 PM assuming that kids are asleep outside of these times. Norway & Sweden have used legislation to ban advertising aimed at kids illegal as they recognize the commercial pressures; how they may play a role in development of children and how children’s choices may affect the family economy. (source: www.newrules.org). With time, many other nations like Belgium, Italy and Poland are considering tightening the restrictions. Different cultures respond differently to issues which are sensitive in some parts of the world but not others.
Though many countries have tried to establish ground rules to advertising to kids, many variations exist. Reasons vary. People from different cultural backgrounds may interpret the same advertisement in different ways. For example, an advertisement about history of Tibetan temples may be interpreted differently by kids (and their parents) from China and those from India. Different regulations will be in place in those 2 countries. Insufficient technology may restrict the kind of variations you place on the advertising medias. Even the ability to measure the kind of audience that views the advertisements may be limited in places. That creates variations in the degree to which the regulations are placed. Moreover, in countries such as India, young children are not enforced to go to bed by any certain time at night, which makes it hard to impose restrictions based on time.
This issue poses a great challenge especially for a country like the United States given the diversity of cultures that exists in her residents. Such high diversity means that the same ad may have many different interpretations and effects on the viewers in USA. Having said that, some restrictions on advertisements to children is necessary in the United States especially considering the growing cases of street violence, obesity and internet frauds via chat and blog sites.
There are many obstacles to doing this the right way. The main challenge is that there are multitudes of mediums available today through which advertisements can reach the kids. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to curtail all advertising mediums like TV, print ads, banner ads, news papers, street ads, billboards and today the Internet provides the biggest threat for unregulated advertisements. Though some restrictions are created, some irresponsible parents will not enforce strict discipline on their children. Such children may find alternative ways to access the ads which are otherwise regulated to children of more responsible parents. Those children will meet in school without the supervision of the parents, and may succumb to peer-pressure which may defeat the very purse of the regulations. A large group of people believe that US is a country that promotes freedom of speech and they view these regulations as a breach of the concept of freedom. Another huge issue is that children of various ages as audience are valued at multiple billion dollars according to Mr Keeley as cited in New York Times article (15th Feb 2010). In capitalist economies, such high revenue potential is hard to overlook or curtail. There is no shortage of creative ad-makers who are likely to find innovative ways to market the products to the younger audience while staying in the scope of these regulations.
My recommendation for the issue is that the control of regulating the access to advertisements for the kids should be a decision left to the parents and/or guardians of the children. The government’s role in this issue should be to provide as many tools and mediums so that the parents are able to make the right decisions for their children. Some of those recommendations are summarized hereafter:
· Establish a certificate or a rating system for all TV and Internet video ads and enforce them via strict guidelines which are subject to periodic audits. It will help the TV channels and/or websites to make informed decisions on whether to air / play the ads on the TV channel / website for the audience that they cater to. For example, Cartoon Network will never opt for ads that are not rated for kids of the age 10 and younger.
· For banner ads and billboards that are placed on street side, a regulation can be developed as a national policy to ban sexually explicit ads and/or alcohol / tobacco ads for example. Such ads can be only placed inside places restricted for adults only. i.e. night clubs and bars etc.
· A regulation should be formed with the corporations that produce Computer Operating Systems. They should enforce creation of profiles for every member of the household. Parents should be responsible for creating profiles for children under 18. This information should be stored in secure manner and integrated with every website. The W3 Consortium (world wide web organization) should enforce technical limitation that every time web servers receive a request to deliver a web page, they should check the certificate of profile of the user that identifies the age of the recipient and delivers and/or block the inappropriate content. This program if implemented correctly will create the biggest impact on the fastest growing medium of today’s world – internet.
· As stated above, there is simply too many advertising mediums and restricting all of them is practically impossible. Hence, more and more advertisements should be created by the governments to preach the importance of not exposing children to inappropriate advertisement material and also on how to use the tools and services offered by the governments in order to make better choices.
In summary, advertising the appropriate material to children is a complicated issue and it can be resolved better via a good combination of educational campaigns and enforcements listed above.
Sources:
Rules in Norway:
Wikipedia and ICC:
http://www.iccwbo.org/policy/marketing/id8532/index.html
