Comercialisation of our Children - Essay Example

29 Apr. Commercialization of our Children: Consuming Kids is an excellent movie that reveals the strategy of corporate enterprises which we all are aware of in our subconscious, but we do not discuss it quite often so as to be sure of it. The movie emphasizes that companies have been trying to approach us through our kids for a long period of time. A vast majority of the consumers in the market are driven by the needs or the urges of their children. A child becomes a potential consumer right from his/her very early moments in this world.

Technology has played a big role in promoting the child advertising. Using such means as television, corporate enterprises have been controlling the brains and fantasies of our children ever since the television came into being. Since early 1950s and 1960s, televisions have been casting children in the advertisements, and the results have always worked wonders for them. Fast food advertisements have conventionally presenting children as celebrities. This has not been done without a purpose! Children tend to gain the sense of the world through what they see on the television.

So one child on the tv sets pattern for millions of others who watch the child sitting in their bedrooms. In this way, children have been tried to convince for long that life is about buying things and getting more and more. Child advertising took the form of a well developed industry in the 1970s. In the 1970s, more and more of such advertisements were being made, and the strategy of corporate enterprises became so obvious, that the US government had to intervene and ban child cast into advertisements on the tv.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned child advertising. It was done so because children were considered too immature to make rational decisions about the choice of products, while the advertisements were putting undue pressure upon them for personal gains. Children are easily deceived by the advertisers. This was when the sugar cereal companies raised their objections in the congress against the policies enforced by the government. In the 1980s, marketing was considered by people as the key to success and modernity.

Therefore, Congress sapped FTC’s ability to ban child advertising, and the practice flourished ever since. There is no doubt in the fact that kids are the primary consumers, and the fundamental source of increase in the market value of products. A country flourishes on the basis of its economic strength. Economy can not be strengthened without successful business of the corporate enterprises. In this context, child advertising is not a harmful practice for the economical strength and prosperity of a country.

Children have a habit of insisting the parents to buy them things, and they would remain as such because a child’s nature that can never be changed. Taking this into consideration, banning child advertising brings more harm to a nation’s economy than good. Therefore, it should be considered as one of the marketing strategies of the corporate enterprises and should be allowed. Works Cited: Consuming Kids: The Comercialisation of Children, 2011. Film. 29 Apr. 2011. .