The New York Times’ Stuart Elliot wrote that “A Procession of Penguins” was arriving on the advertising scene, and referenced Shaping Youth’s article where we admonished pharmaceutical giant Roche for tredding on thin ice by using animated kiddie flicks to mine pocketbooks of parents to promote their flu elixir.Nothing against Happy Feet, just the penguin pill-pushing policy. … [Read more...]
Normally I’d toss this American Idol-KFC "Buffalo Snacker" blurb in the ‘who cares’ hype hamper to keep from giving KFC more PR buzz, but frankly, this whole ‘hidden message’ ad trend has me tweaked. Aside from the toxicity of targeting kids with MORE KFC transfat-laden junk food on the season premiere of the über-popular reality show … [Read more...]
What do you get when you cross a top-rated TV show like American Idol with online advergaming? “Pop Tarts American Idols Live Tour,” a media+mind+body equation that adds up to a challenging counter-marketing focus for Shaping Youth. Preteens love "behind the scenes" info and being "in the know" which is why we use the same methods to deprogram corporate cues and … [Read more...]
A couple days ago Anastasia at Ypulse posted a jarring ‘uh-oh’ article, “Dads rate lower than friends and grandma with teens” based on the latest Harris Interactive research on teens and materialism. She wrote, “Dads, we have a problem. For all the talk about how teens are closer to their parents (plural), it's still mom (and grandma and friends) that make teens feel happier … [Read more...]
Timing is everything! This week we’re counter-marketing Capri Sun Coastal Coolers as ‘juice pouches that aren’t juice’ but mostly high fructose corn syrup. (HFCS) We’ve been using Capri Sun label lingo as an example of misleading claims...Lo & behold: 48 hours ago, Center for Science in the Public Interest launched a lawsuit against Kraft for … [Read more...]
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