"Cool. It's from T-Mobile." My daughter fiddled with my Sony Ericsson cell phone. A week ago she hadn't even been aware of anything other than that my mobile was red and could be used to call friends to arrange playdates from the grocery store.
"My shoes are Tom Tailors," she boasted to her friend.
Brand names have hit my baby's brain.
If you are to believe the documentary Consuming Kids - The Commercialization of Childhood, US children ages 2-11 view 25,000 ads annually on television alone. According to the fílmmaker's fact sheet,
Materialistic values are correlated to exposure to marketing for children as young as preschoolers. Children who are more materialistic are less happy, more depressed, have lower self-esteem, and report more symptoms of anxiety.
We have all been there ~ the salivating that takes place in the backseat at every yellow 'M' with a red base while tooling down the highway. Marketing messages are everywhere ~ on packaging, shopping carts, sides of busses, on phones, screens, and even in public toilets. We are bombarded with messages, subliminal and blatant. And there is an art to it, too.
Secrets of the Marketing Masters author Dick Martin reveals the tricks behind these messaging mavens who have imprinted their brand so intrinsically in our minds that life seems unthinkable without them. A Coke and a smile; Just Do it; Real Beauty. His book is an excellent insight into why we behave as we do: the marketing wizards behind the curtain told us to. Whether we like it or not, we all attend the University of Consumerism because there is no escape. What we can do is be mindful of the messages being displayed and to limit exposure as best we can.
Mr. Martin's premise is companies rise and fall by the way they brand themselves. Deeply tied to the consumer's emotional response, effective branding leaves us with a feeling that our lives will be improved by this product or that. To some degree it is true. I smile every time I wear the 100% Real Beauty T-Shirt Dove gave me a few years back. I opt to purchase their soap over other brands because they give me the feeling they care. That it is a highly manipulative game of profit and corporate reward bothers me little, as long as I feel good and no one is being harmed in the process. Therein lies the double-edged sword. Brands manipulate my reality for better...and for worse. And they manipulate my children's reality, too.
Barbie, the fifty-something dolly that enrages feminists for its false body image-building in little girls, has come under fire for years. Luckily, my daughter never took to Barbie's much, although she had at least six of them at one point. I had tried to have her identify with the imaginary Barbie world as I had as a kid. We all need role models of one kind or another (although Barbie is not one to which I ever cared to aspire). Adult women are no different.
Take the collagen lip filler I bought from a well-known cosmetic company who periodically hires Scarlett Johansson's face for their ad campaigns. I feel better wiping the tube of unidentifiable cream around my forty-year-old lips - like I'm really doing something to improve my life. My guess is it won't hinder the signs of aging, but at the moment I am content to be in on the company's little fib. It is useless, yet rewarding to act like the master of my own ship even if it widely diverges from reality. But what if I went from product to product, seeking the Holy Grail of Youth without knowing I was really lying to myself? I'd be better off spending that money on some blueberries with antioxidant properties to detoxify my middle aged frame. But the joy of emulating Ms. Johansson for even a moment suspends sanity for the time it takes to bring the tube to the check-out counter and bag it.
They tell me brand name chasing gets worse as the kids get older. I'm not sure I'm ready for it. One look at this video tells me we have a ways to go before we sleep.
