I’ve mentioned this issue before but I’ve been thinking about it again in light of the Captain Copyright insanity.
Financial services companies that address the home consumer market with loan and debt consolidation services advertise freely and frequently on commercial children’s TV channels in the UK. I’m not sure about other territories.
My beef in short; they generally take the approach of representing a family at home situation where either or both parents are characterised as being visibly depressed about their financial woes - usually sitting at the breakfast table in the morning just after the mail has been delivered. “Debts getting you down?, can’t afford a holiday? too many store cards?” - the usual doom laden commentary overdubbed on top of this domestic financial nightmare scenario.
Until, that is, you make one simple easy call to XXXXX-A-LOAN and make all your troubles disappear into one simple, easy to manage loan. Next scene is family group hugs, dog wagging tail, beach vacations, beaming smiles all round and soft-focus glow a-plenty.
On commercial satellite channels you’ll typically see one or two of these advertisements during each break. I’d roughly guess that a kid who watches an hour’s worth of childrens programming will be subjected to ten or more adverts in an hour, or between 5-10 minutes per hour.
Aside from objecting to the bad over-acting and duly accepting this isn’t quite in the same league as advertising cigarettes to kids, my conspiracy theory is that the loan companies aren’t altogether bothered (meaning they are secretly happy) about the marketing splash damage that occurs and brainwashes kids (from the age of zero) about how good your life instantly becomes when you borrow money from loan companies. And as a result, how receptive their little brains will end up being when they are themselves of loan obtaining age in later life.
Of course, their reasonable defence is that they are not breaking any laws, nobody is getting provably hurt and the target demographic are actually the parents who will likely be hovering (or hoovering, ahem) around in the background.
But this seems fundamentally morally wrong to me. Like the accusations sometimes levied at McDonalds about kids associating happiness with junk food courtesy of the classic ‘Happy Meal’ and those same kids eating their ways out of depression in adult life because of years of programming.
My personal solution is simple, limit or eliminate the amount of children’s TV my 3 year old daughter watches. But that would be to acquiesce and ignore the festering issue that continues to pollute our kids’ brains and allow cynical finance companies to get away with what I think are immoral practices.
I think I should probably write to the UK advertising standards body and see what they have to say about it.
Financial services companies that address the home consumer market with loan and debt consolidation services advertise freely and frequently on commercial children’s TV channels in the UK. I’m not sure about other territories.
My beef in short; they generally take the approach of representing a family at home situation where either or both parents are characterised as being visibly depressed about their financial woes - usually sitting at the breakfast table in the morning just after the mail has been delivered. “Debts getting you down?, can’t afford a holiday? too many store cards?” - the usual doom laden commentary overdubbed on top of this domestic financial nightmare scenario.
Until, that is, you make one simple easy call to XXXXX-A-LOAN and make all your troubles disappear into one simple, easy to manage loan. Next scene is family group hugs, dog wagging tail, beach vacations, beaming smiles all round and soft-focus glow a-plenty.
On commercial satellite channels you’ll typically see one or two of these advertisements during each break. I’d roughly guess that a kid who watches an hour’s worth of childrens programming will be subjected to ten or more adverts in an hour, or between 5-10 minutes per hour.
Aside from objecting to the bad over-acting and duly accepting this isn’t quite in the same league as advertising cigarettes to kids, my conspiracy theory is that the loan companies aren’t altogether bothered (meaning they are secretly happy) about the marketing splash damage that occurs and brainwashes kids (from the age of zero) about how good your life instantly becomes when you borrow money from loan companies. And as a result, how receptive their little brains will end up being when they are themselves of loan obtaining age in later life.
Of course, their reasonable defence is that they are not breaking any laws, nobody is getting provably hurt and the target demographic are actually the parents who will likely be hovering (or hoovering, ahem) around in the background.
But this seems fundamentally morally wrong to me. Like the accusations sometimes levied at McDonalds about kids associating happiness with junk food courtesy of the classic ‘Happy Meal’ and those same kids eating their ways out of depression in adult life because of years of programming.
My personal solution is simple, limit or eliminate the amount of children’s TV my 3 year old daughter watches. But that would be to acquiesce and ignore the festering issue that continues to pollute our kids’ brains and allow cynical finance companies to get away with what I think are immoral practices.
I think I should probably write to the UK advertising standards body and see what they have to say about it.