Stop Pinching Your Sister! ***

As a marketing student at CBS, I struggled with the ethics of marketing, and advertising in particular. Was it really right, I wondered, to put pictures of cartoon characters on the front of sugar-filled cereal boxes? Or to use scantily clad teenagers to promote clothing lines? Or to airbrush models to “correct” their “flaws” on the covers of magazines?

When I asked one of my professors to help come to terms with this dichotomy, he helped me reframe the issue. In its purest form, he explained, advertising is a process by which companies help consumers identify solutions for their needs. Hairy legs? You need a razor! Hungry? We sell food!

Fair enough. I, for one, love it when I am introduced to a product that fills a need in my life.

But what about those other ads? You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that try to sell me something I don’t even want, much less need. Rather than providing useful information, these types of ads seem to be designed to create a sense of inadequacy so that their product can fill our (newly identified) “void”.  For example, I’m cruising through my day feeling pretty good about life when BOOM! I see an ad for perfume. There’s an impossibly thin, yet voluptuous ,drop-dead gorgeous, scantily-clad woman wrapped in the embrace of a man who just stepped off the cover of a Harlequin Romance. I can’t help but notice that I’m not as tall as her. Or as thin. Or as pretty. Or as fashionable. Wow! All the sudden, I realize how woefully inadequate I really am. Maybe her perfume will help me feel better.

OK, hopefully you are all rolling your eyes right about now. We’re all a little more savvy than that. We know that buying a bottle of perfume (or air freshner, or a new car, or whatever) isn’t really going to solve our problems.

We know that. But what about our children? As a parent, one of the most valuable tools we can give our children is to teach them to become a conscious consumer. In order to do that, we need to help our children develop an (age-appropriate) awareness of the messages they are receiving, and start giving them the tools they need to learn to process these messages.

In our house, we rarely watch television, but when we do, I make a conscious effort to watch the advertisements with Puppy and Kitten. We often talk about the ads – what kind of products they are selling, and what kind of message the ads are sending.

Does this mean my daughters are going to grow up free of the negative messages they are exposed to on a regular basis? Not likely. But a few months ago when Puppy saw an advertisement for fast food flash across the television screen, she looked at me and said, “I know they are just trying to trick me into wanting that so they can have my money.”

I was at once proud of her insight, and terrified that I’d created a cynical little human being, unable to trust the world around her.

It’s a balancing act, but I think in the long run teaching my daughter to become a conscious consumer is going to pay off. And who knows, maybe someday she’ll even major in marketing.