The Simpsons are Cool but Barbie's a Minger - Professor Agnes Nairn

4. Rejection of Marketing and
Advertising
We noted in our findings of Stage 1 that children’s everyday discourses are deeply embedded
in the commercial world where products, brands, TV shows, advertising, celebrities and
electronics seem to co-habit seamlessly. We noted that children enjoyed the game of
naming brands and appreciated the creative executions, tunes and jingles of a lot of adverts
(many for adult products). However, the in-depth discussions of Stage 2 revealed a more
ambivalent relationship to marketing and advertising practices.
The children were quite happy to admit that they routinely bought products simply because
they were advertised on TV or marketed through their own TV show. The following
quotations about Beyblades from a year 6 boy in the single sex group at the State School
and about Bratz from a year 3 boy in a mixed group at the Private School are typical:
Interviewer Ok. Do you remember when people first started playing with them
(Beyblades)? Do you remember how that happened? Who started playing
with them first?
Boy 1 Um, it was coz of a TV programme wasn’t it? And everyone started buying
them from the shops and playing with them…
Boy 2 Um, there was, they did loads of advertisements of them.
Year 6, State School, Boys Group
Interviewer How did your sister start playing with them (Bratz)?
Boy Saw an advert on TV.
Interviewer And then your parents bought it for her?
Boy Yes.
Year 3, Private School, Mixed Group
However, although the children acknowledged the power of advertising and marketing to
make them buy they also had a negative reaction to advertising and marketing targeted
directly at them. Thus the boy who told us that the result of the Beyblades TV programme
was that “everyone started buying them from the shops” went on to say “I don’t think the
TV programmes were that good anyway.” And a year 3 State School girl when asked where
she had heard about Bratz dolls replied, “Stupid TV”.
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