A steady diet of advertising.

[MayDay]

My son (age 6) just came home from a week at grandma's house, where the TV is always on.  He had some great ideas of As Seen On TV toys to buy.  Then at bedtime, he told me I should buy some Lysol to clean the toilet, because Lysol cleans what even bleach can't. 

Guess all those advertising dollars worked pretty well on him. 

At home we limit screen time drastically, and they are only watching stuff like a pbs show (and often via netflix) so really very little advertising.  This experience has certainly motivated me to keep it that way!  But I would like to explore the issue of advertising more.  I like to think I am both exposed to very little, and "too smart" to fall for that which I am exposed.  But really, I am probably being affected and not even realizing. 

Has anyone else thought about this subject?  Have any books or articles to recommend?  Both as applies to children as well as adults. 

[agent_clone]

Recently while listening to the radio, one of the people stated that until a certain age children can't identify between the program they are watching and the advertising occurring on tv.  The person also commented that they would discuss advertising with their children.   Unfortunately I can't remember the program I was listening to so I can't provide a link to the audio/transcript.

[swick]

Interesting topic, one I am pretty passionate about. Two great books for an overall view on the psychology of marketing to start with are "Why we Buy" and "Call Of the Mall" both by Paco Underhill.  If you only read one, read "Why we Buy"

A great resource is Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhoods website:

http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/

I wrote a blog post about how food companies target their marketing to children. If you are interested you can read it here:
http://growingcreativekids.com/marketing-to-kids-food-marketing/

[1967mama]

A great book that I read many years ago was "The Plug-In Drug" by Marie Winn ... the title says it all!

[avonlea]

Recently while listening to the radio, one of the people stated that until a certain age children can't identify between the program they are watching and the advertising occurring on tv.  The person also commented that they would discuss advertising with their children.   Unfortunately I can't remember the program I was listening to so I can't provide a link to the audio/transcript.

Sweden doesn't allow television commercials to be directed at children .  From what I remember, it is for this reason.  OP, I can't recall which book it was where I read about this, but I bet you can find some info about Sweden's decision by running a Google search.