Kids Are A Captive Audience With Ambient Advertising

Mar. 2007 (retro post) Don't worry, I'd never show the billboard, but let me get this straight: The L.A. Times reports that kids and teens were horrified by outdoor ads of grotesque torture and objectification of women used to promote the release of Lionsgate films’ Captivity...But now we’re supposed to cheer, because the gruesome signage is being removed and wasn't … [Read more...]

Snack Attack: Counter-Marketing Using Shaping Youth’s “THREEP”

For all those parents who have winced, cringed, nagged and cajoled to stop training kids like Pavlov’s dogs to salivate at sports whistles and expect a snack at every game, here’s a round-up of handy hints to rein in the junk food snack pack syndrome. If you’re pulling out your hair watching kids play a healthy sport while tanking up their bodies with … [Read more...]

Web 2.0’s Fun Forward: “The Machine is Us!”

Ever try to explain the phrase Web 2.0 in a digital sound bite? This brilliantly fun little 4-minute video from professor Michael Wesch of Kansas State University does the trick. This digital ditty is cultural anthropology at its finest; you can bet Marshall McCluhan would be duly impressed. It captures the power of Web 2.0 in a smart blip of techno-frenzied pace, … [Read more...]

Pussycat Dolls Vamp for Lame TV; the “F” word is Feminist? C’mon!

Writer Joan Didion once poignantly proclaimed, “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.” Amen, Joan. It’s clear I’m not buying into this whole ‘third wave’ of feminism, where supposedly the new pilot, The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the … [Read more...]

Ning Adds Zing to Personal Social Networking

When Shaping Youth was looking into adding a high performance social networking component to our site under construction, we were pitched by various companies promising mini-MySpace hubs with pricey software technology in the six-figure bracket. Ouch. I was looking for a simple, turnkey solution like Ning, using an intuitive interface to hook up our site in a social media … [Read more...]