How marketing is done to Children ?

• Companies spend about $17 billion annually marketing to children, a staggering increase from the $100 million spent in 1983.

• Children under 14 spend about $40 billion annually. Compare this to the $6.1 billion 4-12 year old’s spent in 1989.[9] Teens spend about $159 billion.

• Children under 12 influence $500 billion in purchases per year.

• This generation of children is the most brand conscious ever. Teens between 13 and 17 have 145 conversations about brands per week, about twice as many as adults.

• Marketing contributes to many problems facing children today

• Marketing directly to children is a factor in the childhood obesity epidemic.

• Marketing also encourages eating disorders, precocious sexuality, youth violence and family stress and contributes to children’s diminished capability to play creatively.

• As young children are developing their gender identities, they are flooded with ads for products promoting sexualized stereotypes. There are 40,000 Disney Princess items on the market today.

• Violent movies, like #Spiderman and #Transformers, market toys that promote violence to boys.

• Children ages 2-11 see more than 25,000 advertisements a year on TV alone[14], a figure that does not include product placement. They are also targeted with advertising on the Internet, cell phones, mp3 players, video games, school buses, and in school.

• Almost every major media program for children has a line of licensed merchandise including food, toys, clothing, and accessories. Brand licensed toys accounted for $22.3 billion in 2006.

• In their effort to establish cradle-to-grave brand loyalty and promote nagging, marketers even target babies through licensed toys and accessories featuring media characters. • Viral marketing techniques take advantage of children’s friendships by encouraging them to promote products to their peers.

Marketing exploits children’s developmental vulnerabilities

• Until the age of about 8 children do not understand advertising’s persuasive intent.

• Very young children can’t distinguish between commercials and program content; even older children sometimes fail to recognize product placement as advertising.

• Marketers often denigrate adults and exploit older children’s desires to fit in with their peers and rebel against authority figures as a selling point for their products.