Key words: advertising, children, media literacy, production techniques, toys

Paper description: This paper seeks to demonstrate children’s understandings of television production techniques and advertising conventions through an analysis of a series of toy commercials designed and drawn by a sample of primary school (7- to 11-year-old) children.

Abstract

In recent years, impassioned debates have slammed the upsurge in commercial targeting at young children. In 1999, the European Commission considered an outright ban on advertising to children in the UK on the grounds that children do not fully understand the aims and intentions of advertisers. In contrast to this, increased attention has been paid, by multi-national companies, to the most effective ways of targeting the ‘tweens’ and young consumers who command a significant portion of the annual family budget through sophisticated ‘pester power’ techniques (Williams, 1997).

The underlying structure of this paper will hinge on two issues. Firstly, many questions are raised through debates about the so-called ‘dangers’ of advertising to children, with expressions of concern about whether or not young audiences are sufficiently ‘media literate’ to understand and ‘decode’ commercial texts. The main worry here is that young children are inexperienced and naïve, whilst ruthless commercial businesses will do anything to capture their target audience and encourage consumer behaviours. Secondly, certain academic theorists posit that, for the child audience, the ‘visual’ features of television texts are more potent than the ‘audio’ features (see, for example, Hodge & Tripp, 1986). This apparent power of ‘visuals’, together with concerns about levels of media literacy, will inform the main thread of argument here.

Using a selection of toy commercials that were designed and drawn (as part of a small scale research study) by a sample of primary school children between the ages of 7 and 11, this paper aims to demonstrate and carefully analyse the extent to which young children understand and appreciate the visual appearance and functions of televised toy commercials. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which the sample children demonstrated their understanding of technical production features (especially ‘camera’ angles and shot sizes), advertisement layout and the overall composition of a meaningful ‘text’. The children’s advertisement designs or ‘texts’ will also be cross-matched with their televised counterparts (where appropriate), to further demonstrate the audience’s levels of understanding and appreciation.

As will be clearly demonstrated, the children’s understanding of televisual production features was sophisticated and their levels of so-called media literacy were impressively high. The children were ‘literate’ enough to be able to transfer their knowledge of the forms and functions of technical production features (as seen in televised toy commercials) from the dynamic medium of television to the static medium of paper. In addition, within this process of translation, the children revealed themselves as expert ‘decoders’ of media texts and rather cynical and savvy consumers.

Short bibliography

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