"Sociology"
Blogging on the World and the behaviors of society
Corporations and How They "Socialize" with Children
In American society, large corporations have figured out the answer to selling more products. The answer is children. The reason why corporations are now starting to target children is because their minds are like sponges, and easily remember a majority of the things thrown at them. As a result, corporations now have extensive marketing teams that create logos, phrases, even cartoons that will get children to remember the company and product. Since children are easily convinced they then go to their mommy or daddy to get the newest toy or happy meal. In my opinion, companies also do this to integrate children into the consumer society at a young age as well as to hopefully keep them as loyal customers when they become older.
To the left is a collage I've created of advertisements used by corporations to target children.
I chose and researched three huge corporations and how much they spent on advertising. The three I chose were, Nintendo, Nerf, and McDonald's.
Nintendo: $447 million (2014)
Hasbro: $195 million (2013)
McDonald's: $42 million (2012)
To the right is a bar graph showing how much each company spent on advertising.
Corporations are beginning to target children in many different ways. One way McDonald's is advertising their food to children is through their happy meals. Since childbirth, all children are surrounded with toys and different things to entertain themselves with. They always like to play with different types of things and so McDonald's took advantage of this. They spend a chunk of their advertising just on happy meals and partnering with different companies to use their toys. This causes children to beg their parents if they can go to McDonald's to get every new toy they have.
Another technique that companies have picked up is the use of memorable characters. McDonald's also does this having Ronald McDonald as their mascot. Many ceral companies do this in their ads. The cereal Lucky Charms uses Lucky the Leprachaun and Frosted Flakes uses Tony the Tiger. Their's loads of other examples of this. Many corporations do this as well as pair these characters with certain phrases to have their product ingrained in our head. This type of advertising is meant for children to sponge up and remember that brand so that they remain loyal to the corporation.
The social paradigm that is being used in advertisements is clearly symbolic interactionism. The paradigm has the action of what corporations are trying to do, interact. These advertisements are being used to interact with children and form a child's "self". Children form an idea in their mind about what corporations are "good" or "bad" based on the advertisement. That is why corporations like McDonald's desperately try to expose children to "Happy" Meals. They named that meal the way they did for a reason. They associate their food with the word happy and all kids believe and then associate McDonald's with being happy. Symbolic interactionism has to do with psychology as well and companies try to exploit that through symbolic interactionism.