Unethical Marketing Causing Children to Grow Up Too Fast?
Nov 9th, 2011 by ellentsang
Reading Heidi’s blog post has invoked me to start thinking about the increasing number of companies out there promoting unhealthy concepts about body image to the public. The increasing number of young girls with eating disorders induced by the social-media-generated idea that “thinner is better” is bad enough. Now the mass media is sending out overtly sexual messages to children, causing young girls to think about their appearance and sex appeal way too early. According to a recent study, tween consumers spend roughly $200 billion a year. Marketers realized that they could greatly increase customer loyalty, customer lifetime value and profitability by marketing to kids very early. However, what are the consequences of this kind of marketing?
Abercrombie & Fitch have been criticized for selling thongs targeted at children. Their provocative children’s undergarments catalogue has angered consumer advocacy groups and given them bad publicity. Now whilst I love Abercrombie & Fitch, I think they’ve stepped over the line this time with their unethical marketing.
Teenage and child models have been used by companies in provocative advertising. In the case of Calvin Klein, one of their ads involving themes which suggested child pornography resulted in television stations refusing the ads, retailers threatening to drop the Klein label, and protesters to march in front of some of the company’s most important customer stores. The ad is now banned, thankfully.
Calvin Klein
I’ve grown tired of seeing an increasing amount of 10-year-olds walking around with plunging necklines and makeup caked on their face. Even the Bratz dolls are sending out the message that “less is more” with their mature clothing and thick makeup.
If we want our next generation of children to act like children, this unethical marketing has to stop now.
What ever happened to cuteness overload like this?
Zara Kids
One Response to “Unethical Marketing Causing Children to Grow Up Too Fast?”
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I read an article a few months ago that reminded me of this post. To sum it up, the author was questioning the marketing of certain products towards children (he named A&F’s underwear line as one of them actually). But he made an interesting point- companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch make products in response to consumer demands. Basically he stated so long as parents continued to purchase these items for their children, companies will continue to make them – after all, they care about their profit and revenues. I partially agree with this, but I also feel that companies can do their part in preventing kids from growing up too fast with their products. This was an amazing post, great job!