Summary and Response to Kid Kustomer

                                                                                                         Sidney #1

Manuel Sidney

English 11000-B

   Summary and Response to “Kid Kustomers”                                 

Journalist Eric Schlosser a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and has also written for the New Yorker, The Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stones magazines addresses the topic of marketing to children in hopes of keeping a life long consumer and argues that this type of marketing is an industry in itself. He supports his claim by stating a few  examples such as Joe Camel being a familiar cartoon image to children as young as six years old, and the character that they could identify with and citing a study that found of  illegal cigarettes sold to minors one third was the Camel brand. While CME Kidcom Ad Traction Study II found that of children’s favorite commercials including Taco Bell, Nike, and Pepsi were popular their favorite advertisement was for Budweiser among children. Finally, he argues that marketing directed at children in this day and age primary goal is to get their parents’ to buy the product, and not merely through whining alone.   

            Schlosser demonstrates his information with an orderly and intelligent methodology. His analysis starts by explaining why marketers target minors. He declares how the McDonald’s Corporation modeled its advertising tactics on The Walt Disney Company which inspired the creation of marketing icons such as Ronald McDonald and his sidekicks marketing executives intended that this marketing shift world result not only in attracting children, but their parents and grandparents as well. He also discusses the method’s ills; the exploitation of children’s ignorance and gullible nature.

            The author’s purpose is to make clear that the intentions of the advertisers are directed toward children and to get them to bother their guardians and bother them well; in addition, he is addressing parents and guardians to become keen to these marketing strategies, and become more aware. The journalist develops how the advertisers succeed in the objectives through the utilization of web. He closes by transitioning through making cases of the gigantic expanding significance of the online networking fundamentally, TV and web as a strategy for marketing. He adopts a straightforward, blunt, an authoritarian tone for his audience as a part of the arrangement, and for the readers of this publication Kid Kustomers and other interested in the topic “cradle to grave” advertising strategy through his reviewed discoveries from the diary of the American Medical Association, through his discoveries he raises James U. McNeal that is viewed as the main power on kids advertising. He also utilizes mental health specialists and the president of youth business sector System counseling other than the creator to show what children need and purchase.

            By reading the article “Kid Kustomers” by Erick Schlosser I refuse to accept with part of his statement when he mentions that advertisements are intended to aim children in order to make a profit which leads to minors exploitation being that that he overstates by generalizing TV commercials on the whole not every commercial is intended to stimulate children’s likes. Based on my observation, I would express that a large amount of television advertisement not only plague families in the United States with their subliminal message, but also tend to corrupt children by persuading them to ask their parents to buy what is shown on TV.