Brainwashing 101: Start 'em young!

quote:CBC: Any food packaged by McDonald's tastes better to most preschoolers, says a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.

Manipulating the minds of children is profitable!

quote:"You see a McDonald's label and kids start salivating," said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist ...

Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding." The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

That's capitalism for ya. Polluting the minds of children for wealth and profit. But at least they're not selling cigarettes to children.

Yea, good point. I forgot about that film, Super Size Me. I guess it takes strong advertising, early in life when our brains are underdeveloped and we're more vulnerable, to get us to engage in such life-threatening activities as smoking and eating at fast food restaurants.

I haven't been to any of the big fast-food places myself in a very long time. My body tends to go into some kind of digestive shock as it tries to expel the alien intruder. It's not a pretty sight.

That's one of the benefits of not owning a car, I think. Less toxins in the environment and less toxins in me. Ha ha. Then again, I could be making a virtue out of necessity. A car is way too expensive a luxury for me to maintain right now.

Ugh. At our elementary school last year, McD's offered their "cheap lunch" to the kids. You could get a double beef burger, or a double cheese burger. WTF???? Kids in the under 11 age group don't need double anything, (like anybody needs double grease?) yet that was the only selection offered. That and fries, and a pop.

My kids took a lunch that day, along with my note to the new principal explaining to him exactly how disgusting that was.

[ 07 August 2007: Message edited by: Polly Brandybuck ]

APA: Protecting children from advertising

quote:The advertising industry spends $12 billion per year on ads targeted to children, bombarding young audiences with persuasive messages through media such as television and the Internet. The average child is exposed to more than 40,000 TV commercials a year, according to studies. And ads are reaching children through new media technologies and even in schools--with corporate-sponsored educational materials and product placements in students' textbooks.

Here are some key points:

quote:"Is it fair to allow advertising to an audience that is too young to recognize commercial messages are biased and have a persuasive intent?"

Advertising effects

Certainly the messages' power of persuasion is compelling, the task force found. Studies cited in the report have shown that after just one exposure to a commercial, children can recall the ad's content and have a desire for the product.

Some messages may influence children's behavior too, says Brian Wilcox, PhD, chair of the task force, which formed in 2000 to conduct an extensive literature review of advertising's effects on children. For example, research has shown that child-directed ads for healthy foods can lose their effectiveness when children view ads for snack foods in the same sitting.

Indeed, some researchers speculate that advertising geared to children--which largely consists of ads for sugary cereals, candy and fast-food restaurants--may be contributing to the increase in childhood obesity by promoting unhealthy foods. Plus, studies suggest that eating habits formed during childhood can persist throughout life, according to the report.

Also of concern is the "privatization" in children's media consumption, with a growing number of young children using the Internet and watching televisions in their bedrooms, where no one is present to explain what they are viewing or reading, according to the report.

That lack of adult interpretation is a concern because young children tend to accept ads as fair, accurate, balanced and truthful, Kunkel says. "They don't see the exaggeration or the bias that underlies the claims," he says. "To young children, advertising is just as credible as Dan Rather reading the evening news is to an adult."

For children to critically process ads, they must be able to discriminate between commercial and noncommercial content and identify advertising's persuasive intent, the report notes.

Particularly alarming to the task force is that commercials also often use psychological research to make their messages more powerful. For example, they draw from developmental psychology principles to build campaigns that persuade children they need a product and to nag their parents to buy it. In addition, advertisers often use characters and celebrities--such as from shows like "SpongeBob SquarePants" or "Blues Clues"--or premium gimmicks to reel in children.

What to do? Here's an example from Auz ...

Protecting Children from junk food advertising in Australia

It's not clear to me whether the Bill was passed or not.

[ 07 August 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

Heh he. My own views may have been formed at an early age. My boyhood ski trips included a stop over at McDonald's in Nanaimo on the way to Green Mountain, Forbidden Plateau or even Whistler. In those days, that was the nearest McDonald's. However, the Nanaimo McDonald's had been charged with serving horse meat, on more than one ocassion I think, and that, shall we say, coloured my views of that esteemed restarant. Snerk.

Kids are taken to McD's and similar outlets by their PARENTS.

If you do not want your kids eating there then do not take them there.

Not hard. Take some responsibility for your own actions.

quote: I am truly offended by such an invidiousness statement
The Conrad Black School of Arrogance?

Anyway, the harm of a McDonalds is not just the quality of the food or the low wages or the contribution to the car culture. It also represents a disconnect between people, children in particular, and where food comes from and under what conditions.

The fast food and processed food industries (and fast food is processed food) drive the worst aspects of modern, intensive agriculture from factory farms, to the liberal use of antibiotics and pharmaceuticals, to the death of the small, family owned farm.

As well, it is what drives the demand for consistency of produce over quality, taste, and nutrition. And there is the presence of chemicals from flavouring to preservatives that have any number of unknown impacts on human development.

The difference between smoking and eating at a McDonalds is that almost everyone knows that smoking is harmful and you make a choice. I don't think most people give much of a thought as to the ingredients in McDonalds food or how it is processed or how it comes to them. How much sugar, for example, is in that special sauce?

People make no connection between the rise in fast and processed foods over the past generation and childhood disorders such as ADS, aggression, learning disabilities, and so on. The treatments to these issues are often found in the same labs that produced the food colourings, flavours, and preservatives.

Targeting tots could build brand recognition later in life, study says

And, therefore, "This can be done through advertising in children's programs or through product placement."

That's capitalism for ya. Brainwashing the kids, brainwashing the parents, brainwashing, brainwashing.

Yes, I looked for that thread, couldn't find it, and, happily, found my old one instead.

The positive feeling is counterbalanced by the knowledge that many, even most, of the thousands of babble entries I've made are gone forever. But, yea, it IS like a little present.

Ya, I know the feeling nbeltov, exactly, and sometimes yearn for the archives, but I have a very good memory, most usually, so not too much has been lost down the memory hole.

Without the trillion dollar, or more, marketing and advertising sectors in North America, capitalism as we know it would collapse. The whole thing hinges, at least in part,  on the creation of demand as firms "compete" in the areas of market share - by advertising and marketing - and lowest payout to workers - by prolonged class warfare over the last few decades. There is no real competition in the area of price for many products whose sale is dominated by the monopoly-like or oligopolistic firms.

There are, of course, political consequences in turning the population into Matrix-like victims and consumers. And that is what "the left" and those who advocate an alternative are up against.

I don't think the left makes full or proper use of all the efforts made by marketers and advertisers. Of course, what is useful and important for the left is going to be different from what is useful and important to those marketers and advertisers. In some sense, the propagandists for advertising and marketing know the working class better than many on the left who put that class at the centre of social life in a new society. I think the baby gets thrown out with the bath water here, as it were, the idea being, I suppose, that nothing useful can come from the study of such harmful activity.

In any case, brainwashing children has got nothing to do with what the left stands for; we stand for the protection of childhood, and the classroom,  from commercial propaganda. Capitalism, OTOH,  wishes to invade the classroom and turn it into a means of ever more profits ... the well being of children be damned. So we have a kind of ethical or spiritual denunciation against such practices.

However, I don't agree with your thumbnail summary. It is not simply a question of who sells better. Our spiritual and economic values, at least for socialists like myself, include a future with a vastly reduced marketing and advertising torrent of propaganda. Those efforts need to be turned towards more socially useful activity. Less brainwashing and more education is what we're about. So it is not simply who sells better, although there's an element of truth there. Capitalist advertising and marketing, on the whole, teachers social passivity and inertness. It takes the political energies of people and turns it into demoralization, nihilism, isolated individualism, and a generalized anger that can be easily directed at targets like women, visible minorities, immigrants, etc. Capitalism is the great Moloch, the great Satan, the great deceiver.

The ideal "consumer", from the capitalist point of view, is a drone who makes themselves available to the advertising torrent hurled at them - on television and in the media generally - and dutifully plays their role in keeping the "economy" going. Such drones never stop to consider what sort of economy they are helping to perpetuate. And so on.

We stand for citizens, not consumers.  We don't want to preach messages that lead to demoralized passivity. It is our aim to energize people, to MOVE them. When people move their consciousness changes. And so on.

So, it is not just a selling job, even of a vision. My two bits.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I agree with the necessity of having a vision by political leaders - or those who aspire to political leadership - but it is very difficult to bring people around to agreeing with "a vision" as opposed to getting people active on a particular issue that is near and dear to them. It really sounds like the making of obstacles rather than mobilizing people.

How did you (or I) come to have the vision you have now? Wasn't it a combination of involvement in particular issues, over time, some independent work on your part, and so on, that led you to where you are today? Did you form your views, all at once, by being convinced by a particular vision? Don't forget, we are talkng about masses of people who have been, as it were, innoculated against socialist ideas, demoralized and demobilized by the advertising and marketing blitzkreig, and so on.

What's that about?

Jello is Jello is Jello... it doesn't matter which flavour, it wouldn't taste the same by any other name. J-E-L-L-O, Jello!

Advertising to children who are ill-equiped to distinguish true from false claims, whose intellectual, social and emotional development is far from complete IS brainwashing.It's precisely the right term to describe the harmful effect, and intent, of advertisers. How else would you describe cigarette advertising and Joe Kool and candy-flavoured cigarettes aimed at kids? Give your head a frakking shake.

I will give you that there are many factors why, e.g., people eat junk food - I know, for example, that pop and sugar water drinks are cheaper than either milk or juice in poor Northern Manitoba FN communities - but that just shows that advertising and marketing have a context.

EDUPAX, an educational NGO that started by taking on war toys and is now targeting media messaging in general, including the hypersexualization of kids into stereotyped roles, is organizing a conference on November 5 and 6 in Gatineau about media overdosing and child health. If you are in or near the NCR and understand French, this is a great opportunity for teachers and parents to make some links and contacts against this brainwashing flood.

« Les émissions, les films et les jeux vidéo violents m'ont toujours préoccupé pour leurs répercussions sur le comportement des jeunes. Ce colloque voit le jour parce que, maintenant, des gens ont accumulé des connaissances sur l'impact qu'a la consommation médiatique sur l'obésité des jeunes, ainsi que sur d'autres aspects de leur vie », annonce Jacques Brodeur, responsable du comité organisateur du colloque Edupax et conseiller en prévention de la violence et en éducation pour cet organisme à but non lucratif en prévention.

Il fait remarquer que les publicités s'adressant aux enfants ne cessent de croître, sans que ceux-ci ne soient vraiment sensibilisés à leurs méfaits. Il estime que la surconsommation médiatique a de fâcheux effets sur eux. « Elle affecte leur santé, leur propre estime, leur qualité de vie. Elle les expose à la sexualisation précoce, aux médicaments, aux produits amaigrissants, à la violence, à la criminalité, ainsi qu'au décrochage scolaire, etc. »

Sometimes people don't have time to cook nutritious meals from scratch when both parents are working to make ends meet. Sometimes they don't even have time to make the kids lunch or are just too exhausted and shove a few bucks at the kids and tell them to eat at the cafeteria, and-or wherever. TV and fast food started out in the 1950's as frozen TV dinners and then escalated from there. Broadcast TV  and radio and food became an overnight sensation as far as propagandizing the public was concerned. Joe Goebbels himself never realized the propaganda potential for TV combined with radio and newsprint that today's capitalists have taken advantage of. Marketing propaganda used to be an art form. Now they have it down to a science.

Well that says it all right there. I'd never heard of Bernays before or that he influenced Goebbels. Fascinating. And US neocolonialists had an army of darkness working for them in the Pentagon, CIA, and sometimes CIA heads with connections to Wall Street etc. Howard Hunt was one of their tools in those days and responsible for planning the overthrow of governments in small Central American countries for the Fruit Company's and for the benefit of other fruit and trading companies benefit paying Latino workers next to nothing.

And I thought Howard Hunt was evol incarnate. This Bernays guy was real piece of work.

I also occasionally stop for dinner at A&W for a greasy burger and fries or get KFC(very unhealthy) for the family but it is because of feeling like I don't have the time to go to the grocery store and by fresh food and prepare a nice meal that I do this.  Not having a car to drive to a store and load up with groceries, or a deep freeze to store enough food for a couple weeks is also a reason.  

I'm not going to change anyone's mind here, but my parents for example never kept soda pop in our fridge at home. never. Nor did they order out or pick up fastfood more than a few times a year neither did they buy us chocolate bars everyday as a treat for themselves or their children. 

My point is now that we've grown up none of us keep pop in our house or regularly order fast food very often despite seeing thousands of hours of commercials as kids for these products.  Nor do any of us smoke.  I feel that the parent's example has far more of an influence than advertising.

"McMoms" Do McDonald's Bidding to Brainwash Other Moms

Fast food giants prey on parents' gullibility to sell unhealthy food to children '06

Who would deny their kid ice cream, toys, and cartoons? Kids have been the targets of multi-billion dollar corporate brainwashing propaganda for decades. It's a large reason why kids in North America are so unhealthy today. They've been producing fat kids for a long time like people are so many profitable widgets. And we can throw those people on the capitalist scrap heaps of time once junk food capitalists and big pharma are finished with them.

remind

so is it that you and you're daughter are smarter than the rest of those easily brainwashed folks or just less gullible(as per Fidel recent post)

I hate mcDonald food but what are they supposed to do - not try to market their product ? honestly - they should just tell people don't eat here?

less gullible,  had an education in health care, understood body functions, and went to a Linus Pauling seminar at UVIC.

Plus I had grandparents who lived kosher, and lived to be into their late 80's and 90's, with no health problems, at all...as excellent role models, nutritionally.

... if I had been a practising Jew, or Quaker, there would have been no issues about child endangerment. ;)

Ya I don't like the comparison of less gullible versus gullible. I am my brother's keeper and don't believe that anyone should be taken advantage of in an I'm alright Jack capitalist setup. I don't consider myself smarter than anyone but perhaps more informed than average on certain issues. At the heart of this kind of attitude is an economic conundrum referred to as public choice theory. And it says that democracy produces gross inefficiencies in government policies due to special interest groups lobbying governments to implement inefficient policies that benefit only the few lobbyists lobbying for those policies. The rational ignorance of voters is blamed for our collective inability to elect governments who can make efficient policy all of the time. Therefore, the theory goes, we need free markets to make important decisions for us about the best and most efficient allocation of resources. They neglect to mention infamous free market failures as negative examples.

so if mcdonalds serving food is like a man beating his wife - shouldn't fast food be illegal then

good luck with that agenda

If you've read Dostoyevsky you should know that human beings are not rational - people already know fast food and smoking are bad but they consume them anyway

people do things against their best interest all the time -even you

Since this has, to some degree, turned into a kind of grab-bag of contributions relating to (capitalist) advertising and marketing, I thought I might make a contribution on a completely different point as it relates to advertising and marketing.

Here is the link ... Michael Löwy - Advertising Is a "Serious Health Threat"-to the Environment

The group of Political Economists over at Monthly Review, going back to Baran and Sweezy, have underlined the critical nature of advertising and marketing to keeping the whole capitalist apple-cart going. Firms compete, in this monopolistic or oligopolistic dominated environment, only in areas of market share and in how much they can reduce the wages/benefits of the workers. (This latter point has only been reinforced by the decades of neo-liberal attacks on working people going back to the late 1970's and continuing to the present.) They don't really compete in terms of price anymore.

Now, in the article, the author firstly notes the following ...

And where do these false needs come from?

We are not here even mentioning "pre-market" studies and such, or products sold by the military industrial complex to government, and so on.

Here's the key point: "Advertising plays an essential role in the production of consumerist demand by inventing false "needs" and by stimulating the formation of compulsive consumption habits, totally violating the conditions for maintenance of planetary ecological equilibrium."

But all this compulsivity is essential to keep the system going. It's ubiquitous and critical.

The author claims that the way to distinguish an authentic need from an artificial one is whether the need persists without advertising?

Very well expressed and, perhaps, a key of sorts to getting rid of this monstrous system...

More specifically, why is advertising such a huge threat to the environment? It's a terrible waste of planetary resources that can, and should, be preserved or used for better purposes. In the USA alone, we're talking about a trillion dollar industry. That's a lot of waste.

Plenty of effort will have to be made to overcome this massive colonization of minds (brainwashing). But it will have to be done to overcome the harmful compulsive consumption that drives this endlessly rapacious system of unlimited growth to the abyss of global heating. "Advertising harassment and unlimited growth are two inseparable dimensions of the system, two teats from which capital accumulation feeds."

A good read.

Thanks for that link Tigana, well worth reading.

I wrote on babble a few weeks back that Obama was nothing more than a brand or a slogan.  Mind you,  I was reading Klein's No Logo at the time, so branding was on my mind.  Anyway, I like this passage from the linked article:

I've long thought that post-war western societies deploy the most sophisticated propaganda systems ever developed to maintain a veiled but coercive capitalist social order. Carrot-covered billboards right in your face, the stick concealed in the shadows or deployed against brown people on other continents. They've learned from the great leaps forward of Mr.Goebbels and the Stalin's propagandists, both of whom were expert at motivating the masses into all sorts of counter-intuitive behaviors through elaborately staged rituals and props. I think of Debord's Society of the Spectacle here as well.

We have been up to our necks in advertising for so long we hardly see it, it no longer strikes us as the bizarre contrivance that it is. I am constantly marvelling at the talent and resources that go into it. As a visual artist, a painter, I can only drool at the billboard-sized computer enhanced photograph-based images that can be seen in any short walk from my home, indeed out my very window; and every few weeks these visual marvels of technology are replaced with a whole new wonderful set of images! It's magic!

It's just so sad the language and content of this imagery is limited to the depressing and insulting monoculture of promotional advertising, all calibrated sound-bite style to quickly grab the attention and penetrate the subconscious, shorn of the deeper and more reflective possibilities of imagery. It ratchets up the visual noise level of the street but like empty calories provides only superficial stimulus and ultimately abrades the nervous system.

It is hardly radical, but equally unthinkable that billboards be used to deploy socially useful or informative content; only in the rarest occasions do we see visual polemics not associated with commercial self-interest. How shallow and one-dimensional, how modest of our culture!

It's a huge and fascinating subject.

No, I agree that it wouldn't fly to make fast food illegal, even though it's killing so many people.

Perhaps MARKETING unhealthy food should be illegal.  Especially marketing it to kids.

Perhaps you haven't read the contributors immediately preceding your contribution,  Snert. It's not just the harm from a bad diet, but also what might be done with those social resources released from the wastefulness and harmfulness of corporate marketing and advertising. We have plenty of problems that need solving but, somehow, advertising and marketing get, e.g., a trillion dollars in the US every year, but schools have to have bake sales to raise money for kid's books. Am I clear?

I'm starting from the point of view of what's a good use of resources in society. Period. You seem to be starting from the point of view of the idolatry of private property. Big difference.

It's always easy if you just start with Utopia and work backward. Anyway, you still seem to believe that the resources in society are all communal. You should probably check with the population to see if that's what they really want first, and then we can worry about how we use them.

Private property is leading humanity to death. Death of the planet, death of the biosphere, death. Keep worshiping that idol ... right up until everyone, and everything, is dead.

OTOH, It's a fair question to ask how to get from the current shithole of the rule of capital  to a better future. However, the clock is ticking. If a remedy isnt' found, and quickly, we're all dead. And our children as well. I don't think the defenders of the rule of capital really get it.

Great link, Michelle. There's a really significant point made on that site about the efforts to disguise marketing as charity. But then, that's capitalism for ya. The section deserves a lengthy quote ...