During last semester I started to investigate into the relationship between children and the world of advertising. First referring to the book ‘The Tipping Point’ by Malcolm Gladwell I looked at the stickiness factor, which looks at how brands such as Sesame Street become so popular that they “tip” and become sticky. Everyday without realising it we are surrounded (some could say suffocated) with adverts. Everywhere we go , everything we do advertisement is all around us from television and radio adverts to billboards and shop windows we are sometimes unknowingly being subjected to buy, buy, buy! During a university lecture by Jonathan Baldwin I watched a panorama programme which highlights the issue of how more than ever advertising is having an impact on children. This programme opens your eyes, it was astonishing to watch both children and parents buying only branded clothing as they felt pressure to fit in with others . I started to wonder if family upbringing or who your circle of friends are has a large part to play in this and if advertisement even has a part to play.
For my proposal I want to investigate how much affect advertisement has on children and if this has an impact on what parents are buying their children. This would be an interesting subject as we are unsure if children even understand what adverts are or if they even pay any notice when adverts are playing in between their favourite cartoons. To get a successful outcome I need to think about researching into families from different backgrounds, ages and sexes so that my findings are of the best quality. I would like to further my research by using certain research service tools to find out more about this subject. Referring back to ‘Design Methods’ by John Chris Jones I can think about the most relevant design methods to explore my subject further.
Firstly I would like to find out how children interact with television adverts therefore I feel that an observation would be a worthwhile exercise. I could observe how children interact with television advertisement in their natural environment. A nursery or school scene would probably be best as I could get a large group of children together at the same time without them noticing anything unusual. In a family living area the child may feel that I was doing something and therefore I wouldn’t get an accurate result. Where as in a school or nursery the children would be used to different people and therefore be more comfortable in that surrounding. I would look out for signs such as how much attention do they pay when watching adverts? What are they drawn to? Does sound, colour and imagery play any part to what they watch?
The size of the group would probably be around 15-20 children at a time with 3 or 4 individuals watching them. Although this may be a problem as it is hard to track five children at one time to see what they are watching so to get a more accurate reading I could install a camera on top of the television monitor which could track eye contact and see what they are watching although this may be more costly. This would be quite a fast process and overall to get an adequate result I would watch around 15 children. To track results I would collect results and form them into a pie chart so that they are easy to read.
Another valuable research tool to find out how much branding has an impact on children I could do a visual analysis of photographs. I would show children individually images of branded toys, food,etc without any text and see how good children are at recognising different logo’s to find out how exposed they are to branding. I could also let them listen to different jingles from adverts to see how in tune they are with advertisement. This would be an exciting process for them as they are shown different images and sounds which would be played like a game. In between all this a casual interview could take place asking children where they know the logo from? Have they been bought anything with that logo on? What do they like about the logo/jingle?
I would approach around 7 different children aged between 5-10 to get an accurate result. The experiment would last for around 5-10 minutes so that children are alert and interacting with you. This would take place in an environment where children are such as at school or youth club so there is a separate room which could be organised to do the experiment. The streets wouldn’t be a suitable place as there are too many distractions also if a jingle is played there needs to be peace and quiet for the children to listen to it and concentrate. To record results I would fill in a questionnaire as I was doing the experiment which would have all the relevant questions that i would ask during the visual analysis and interview. As the children are so young they would be unable to fill in a questionnaire themselves.
I feel that mind mapping wouldn’t be a worth while research method as the target group is children this wouldn’t be exciting enough for them to want to participate in therefore they will loose interest and an accurate result may not be shown. One to one interaction and actually observing the children is the bast way to find out if adverts are doing what they should and selling a product to its target market.
These research methods will get a clearer indication to what children are watching and what makes an advert interesting. Also finding out how exposed children are to brands and adverts to see how good the child's memory is. This gives an insight into if children understand what logos are and if they have an impact on their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment