While multiple factors influence eating behaviors and food choices of youth, one potent force is food advertising. [16] Today's youth live in a media-saturated environment. Over the past 10 years, US children and adolescents have increasingly been targeted with intensive and aggressive forms of food marketing and advertising practices through a range of channels. [17-22] Marketers are interested in children and adolescents as consumers because they spend billions of their own dollars annually, influence how billions more are spent through household food purchases, and are future adult consumers. [18,23] It is estimated that US adolescents spend $140 billion a year. Children under 12 years of age spend another $25 billion, but may influence another $200 billion of spending per year. [23,24]
The heavy marketing directed towards youth, especially young children, appears to be driven largely by the desire to develop and build brand awareness/recognition, brand preference and brand loyalty. Marketers believe that brand preference begins before purchase behavior does. [28] Brand preference in children appears to be related to two major factors: 1) children's positive experiences with a brand, and 2) parents liking that brand. [28] Thus, marketers are intensifying their efforts to develop brand relationships with young consumers, beginning when they are toddlers. [29] Marketers know that toddlers and preschool children have considerable purchase influence and can successfully negotiate purchases through what marketers term the "nag factor" or "pester power". [28] A child's first request for a product occurs at about 24 months of age and 75% of the time this request occurs in a supermarket. The most requested first in-store request is breakfast cereal (47%), followed by snacks and beverages (30%) and toys (21%). Requests are often for the brand name product. [28] Isler, et al, examined the location, types, and frequency of products that children ages 3-11 requested of their mothers over 30 days. Food accounted for over half (54%) of total requests made by children and included snack/dessert foods (24%), candy (17%), cereal (7%), fast foods (4%), and fruit and vegetables (3%). [30] Almost two-thirds (65%) of all cereal requests were for presweetened cereals. Preschool children made more requests than the older elementary school children. Parents honored children's requests for food about 50% of the time, soft drinks (60%), cookies (50%), and candy (45%). [28] These findings show that food advertisers spend large amounts of money targeting children, in an attempt to build brand loyalty and to persuade them to desire a particular food product, starting when they are toddlers.
Candy Doll Tv J-Pop Music Video target
Food advertisements can also be delivered through in-school media. About 12,000 schools or about 38% of middle and high schools in the US are connected to Channel One, the 12-minute current events program that carries two minutes of commercials including advertisements for soft drinks and high fat snack foods. [46] Schools receive free video equipment in exchange for mandatory showing of the program in classrooms. Brand and Greenberg evaluated the effects of Channel One in-school advertising on high school students' purchasing attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. About 70% of the 45 food commercials shown on Channel One during one month were for food products including fast foods, soft drinks, chips and candy. In schools where Channel One was viewed, students had more positive attitudes about the advertised products, and were more likely to report intentions to purchase these products compared to students who did not have Channel One in their classrooms. However, students who watched Channel One did not report more frequent purchases of the advertised products compared with students in schools that did not show Channel One. [51]
A wide range of food advertising techniques and channels are used to reach children and adolescents to foster brand awareness to encourage product sales. [18] Marketing channels include television advertising, in-school marketing, product placements, kids clubs, the Internet, toys and products with brand logos, and youth-targeted promotions. The strong similarities between the marketing and promotional activities used by food companies to advertise unhealthy foods to children and those used by the tobacco industry to market cigarettes to children are striking. [82] For example, at one time tobacco companies were providing schools with free sports programs, scoreboards, and book covers featuring school logos on the front and cigarette ads on the back. [82] Young children were targeted with the sale of candy and bubble gum in packages that resembled those of actual cigarette brands. [82] Ads for cigarette brands popular with youth were selectively placed in magazines with large youth readerships. Promotional materials (caps, sports bags, lighters with cigarette brand logos), sweepstakes, and premiums were commonly used. The "Marlboro Man," with his image of independence and autonomy, struck a responsive chord among adolescent males. Studies of the use of the cartoon character Joe Camel to promote Camel cigarettes showed that 30% of 3-year olds and over 80% of 6-year olds could make the association between Joe Camel and a pack of cigarettes. [83] In the three years after the introduction of the cartoon camel character, preference for Camel cigarettes increased from 0.5 to 32% among adolescent smokers. [84]
In June 2016, The Guardian published an article about the channel Webs and Tiaras, which had been created in March of the same year. The channel showed people dressed as characters like Spider-Man, Elsa, and the Joker engaging in bizarre or nonsensical actions. The videos themselves had background music but no dialogue. Having no script, there was no language barrier on the videos which would normally hinder worldwide distribution. The article also reported that several nearly identical channels named Toy Monster, The Superheroes Life, and The Kids Club had appeared on YouTube.[7]
On November 22, BuzzFeed News published an article about unsettling videos that depict children in disturbing and abusive situations. The information on the article came with the assistance of journalist and human rights activist Matan Uziel, whose investigation and report to the FBI on that matter were sent on September 22, informing its leadership about "tens of thousands of videos available on YouTube that we know are crafted to serve as eye candy for perverted, creepy adults, online predators to indulge in their child fantasies".[24]
On November 22, 2017, YouTube announced that it had deleted over 50 channels and thousands of videos that did not fit the new guidelines.[38] On November 27, the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that it had "terminated more than 270 accounts and removed over 150,000 videos", "turned off comments on more than 625,000 videos targeted by child predators" and "removed ads from nearly 2 million videos and over 50,000 channels masquerading as family-friendly content".[39] Forbes contributor Dani Di Placido wrote that many problematic videos could still be seen on the platform, and that "the sheer volume of videos hastily deleted from the site prove that YouTube's algorithms were utterly ineffective at protecting young children".[26]
Holliday, an early example of a so-called "citizen journalist" whose video or photos document important events, attempted to profit from his footage, but saw little after it was widely distributed. He lost a suit against the station that had shared the video, but did license the footage for a music video and also the Spike Lee film "Malcolm X."
What blew up ZZ Top into A-List Rock and Roll Hall of Famers was when, in the 1980s, their music videos went into heavy rotation on MTV, featuring a hot rod, a trio of women, and a string of catchy tunes, including "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Sharp Dressed Man," "Legs," and "Sleeping Bag." 2ff7e9595c
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