Buy, Buy, Baby. CBSNews is doing a four-part series called Gotta Have It: The Hard Sell to Kids all about womb to tomb marketing, with kids being targeted in a scope we’ve never seen before. In this video clip, investigative journalist and Buy, Buy, Baby author Susan Gregory Thomas talks about the $20 billion being spent on the 0-3 “baby genius” products … [Read more...]
“From books, to toys, to clothes to snacks. There's a multi-billion dollar, global marketing machine targeting YOUR children. Our special series, Gotta Have It: The Hard Sell To Kids, begins Monday on the CBS Evening News.” You can bet I’ll be tuning in for Shaping Youth’s purposes, though my guess is they’ll be talking about GIA (Girls … [Read more...]
There are plenty of spins on the Spider-Man 3 record-breaking $382 million worldwide “priciest movie ever made" buzz...so I’m going to take a deconstructionist view about summer box office biggies, and look at the impact of media hype-fests on kids. Not pickin’ on Spidey, here; haven’t even seen the flick yet, I’m talking about a global web … [Read more...]
The mousehouse has some holes in its cheese, and this one really stinks. Disney's new preteen social networking portal is geared to fill a void for chatty tweens, as TechCrunch reports here. I'm not alone in finding it unfathomable that Disney didn’t do their due diligence on naming it Disney Xtreme Digital, and branding it Disney DXD. Aside from … [Read more...]
Hate to sound like an ogre, but I’m turning green with GIANT ("gi-normous" as tweens might say) disconnects on the ostensibly hip new Ad Council Shrek :30 PSA urging kids to "get up, get up, get up" and take a “small step” toward healthier eating. This is another classic case of a “throw ‘em a bone and show we care” marketing maneuver, … [Read more...]
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