NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
The Importance of Brands, Logos, and Advertisements on Young Americans Foreword The effect of advertising on young generations of Americans can be hardly overestimated. As a matter of fact, now we can talk of formation of the whole advertisement inspired youth sub-culture, where the value of things is strongly dependent on its coolness. Comparing to the year 1990, when industry's spending's on advertisement accounted for 100 million dollars, in the year 2000 these spending's had reached 2 billion dollars. Companies' advertising campaign increasingly target children and teenagers, because the buying power of their parents has grown stronger in recent years. This has to do with the demographic shifts in American society.
There is a growing tendency of having only one child in American families. This particularly applies to White people, as they that posses the strongest buying power. The parents of one are more likely to buy their child a non-essential brand items. Nevertheless, it is an advent of Globalization that brought advertising that target kids to a whole new level. Basically, all socio-political processes in U. S.
are beginning to be motivated by economic considerations alone. The outer shell of democracy and freedom remains unchanged, but the essence of American way of life has been transformed drastically. We might argue about whether it is good or bad, but the fact is that our society is now being based solemnly on the principle of economic profit. This is what children are being taught at school. According to our vision of democracy, what matters in this life is the level of comfort that individual can attain.
The ideal is to be able to earn as much money as possible with the least possible effort applied. Such philosophy cannot have any moral limitations, when it comes to selling particular product, on the part of commercial institution. Psychologists have rightly concluded that the building customers' brand name loyalty must begin, while they attend kindergarten. In his article How Marketers Target Kids Michael Dogan says: According to the Center for a New American Dream, babies as young as six months of age can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. Brand loyalties can be established as early as age two, and by the time children head off to school most can recognize hundreds of brand logos (Dogan). There are certain concerns about whether it is moral to manipulate with children's subconsciousness, in order to achieve a commercial goal, but as practice shows, the value of eventual profit overweight's the validity of such concerns.
In this paper we will analyze a different marketing strategies, which companies apply to young Americans. This will give us an insight on which of these strategies we can consider as an appropriate and on what should be the public reaction, regarding the advertisement campaigns that target our kids. Psychological Aspects In his book The Kids Market: Myth and Realities James McNeal tells us about the deepest principles of effective advertisement: Brand marketing must begin with children. Even if a child does not buy the product and will not for many years...
the marketing must begin in childhood (McNeal, p. 25). Majority of companies that deploy differentiation business strategy follow these guidelines, as establishing a brand loyalty, on the part of the buyers, is what benefits their commercial success the most. Children and teenagers' world views are bipolar. They tend to think about things in the strong positive or negative contexts. They also associate positivity and negativity with their empirical experiences, which influence their subconscious drives. Children have a strong group instinct.
From the time time when kids identify themselves with one of the genders, they strive to deepen their ties to a particular group, which they consider themselves being a part of. In racially homogeneous societies children's association follow the traditional gender-based model. In multicultural societies, children attach foremost importance to their racial background. Yet, in the societies, where racial mixing continues on unprecedented scale, the multiculturalism itself looses its actualization, since people have in them a little bit of everything. But this creates the situation when they also cannot link themselves with any particular racial group of distinct cultural traditions. This is why their inner drive towards association sublimates itself into a brand name allegiance.
Many companies benefit on it, by adjusting their advertisement campaigns, so that they would correspond to the psychological needs of targeted group of people. The advertising strategy of Nike company can serve as a best example of it. The main goal of Nike's strategists is to make the products of this company appealing to people between ages 15 and 25. It is not a secret that young people of this age have been indoctrinated with political-correctness from the time they began attending school. As a result, they cannot effectively identify themselves with values that really matter. And this where comes Nike with its advertisement ads that suggest: do what's right, do Nike.
Tom Hincker explains the inner works of Nike advertising, by saying that Nike allows disoriented teenagers to project their ego into socially accepted and respectable frame: Ads work on a variety of different levels including, but not limited to, sign typology, paradigmatic meaning, psychological appeals, emotion, roles, values / beliefs , and knowledge. Again, the impact of an ad comes from the interplay between these various aspects of make-up and the reader's own notions about him / herself and the world" (Hincker). This method proved to be really effective and in 1999 Nike ended up with yearly revenue, which was 3 times bigger than before the new advertisement strategy was being deployed in 1995. The irony here lies in the fact that, while promoting self-respect among people that wear Nike products, this company's production lines are located in the Third World countries, where workers work for 12 hours a day for as low as 5 - 10 dollars.
Pester Power Ever since the end of World War 2, every next generation in this country, such as baby boomers or Generation X, was more susceptible to the dubious pleasures of instant gratification. In today's America, 70 % of people buy products and pay for the services with the money they don't have, by the mean of credit cards. Partially, this is due to the fact that in early stages of their upbringing, parents used to yield to their nagging to buy them new toys. In my opinion, advertising product to kids that will begin to bug its parents about buying it as consequence, is the most despicable of all advertising methods.
Kids are being thought of as a mean of obtaining profit. Economists divide advertising, which is based on kids' ability to extract money from their parents, on persistence type and importance type. The first one is best shown in one of the Simpsons episode, where Lisa asks Homer: Will you buy me a pony is I ask you? . No says Homer. But what if I do it for 99 times?
continues Lisa. Sure enough, she gets her pony, after having bugged her dad about it for long enough. It is estimated that 60 % of Mattel sales come as a result of children's active nagging. This company quite openly endorses children to do it by suggesting: Your parents will buy you our new Barbi doll if you keeping asking them about it for long enough, in one of its advertisement TV ads. Some companies represent their products as a must have items. In that case, the advertisement accents apply more for parents than for their kids.
Parents are encouraged to think that buying an expensive toy for the child can somehow replace the lack of parental attention, on their part. According to the article Parents Say Pester Power Breeds Savvy Shoppers, which can be found on Raising Kids site: Over 95 % of kids have pestered their parents for a product promoted on TV. But only 12 % of mums and dads think advertising to children should be banned and 30 % think ads are a valuable way of teaching children about marketing (Raising Kids. com). Money and Sex Even as recent as 20 years ago, securing customers' loyalty to the particular brand of products constituted of winning his satisfaction with a quality of product. In our days, the companies that target young Americans, rely on customers receiving a perceived value rather than the actual value.
Calvin Klein jeans actually have a lower fabrics quality than the jeans of well established competing brands, such as Lee or Wrangler. Nevertheless, CK jeans are enormously popular among young people, because of professionally designed TV commercials, which portray people who wear them as sophisticated and sexy. This also implies that they belong to a separate sub-culture of those who enjoy life to the fullest. By paying 150 dollars for CK jeans, the teenager does not buy a quality product alone he buys a self-confidence. He manifest to others his life style, which often doesn't have anything to do with what he or her really is. It is very easy for the companies to manipulate with young people subconscious anxieties, because they have a professional psychologists working for them.
Their task is to make company's advertisement appealing to youth by deploying a variety of psychological tricks, designed to lure young people into buying particular product. The best way to accomplish it is to convince the public that the proclaimed value has a different properties, other than simply a good quality of the product. The young people's inexperience and their hyper sexuality makes them very susceptible to masterly crafted advertisement campaign. About 90 % of all commercials, which target youth, exploit their sexuality. They imply that using a particular brand of products will make one irresistible to the representatives of opposite sex. The most recent TV advertising campaign that uses a sexually suggestive images is created by the makers of Axe body spray.
In it, females are shown as simply going crazy after sensing Axe scent in the air, and it is implied that they want to have sex with axed men...
Free research essays on topics related to: advertisement, advertising campaign, buying power, young people, young americans
Research essay sample on Young Americans Advertising Campaign
