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out to manipulate children?
Media industry leaders respond to charges being raised by a group of prominent pychologists
By Dave Lindorff
Last week, Commercial Alert, a Washington-based advocacy group, released a letter sent to the American Psychological Association denouncing the use of psychological research and techniques in the marketing and advertising of products to children. Written by Allen Kanner, a clinical psychologist at the Wright Institute at the University of California at Berkeley and signed by over 60 psychologists, the letter also calls for the APA to establish ethical guidelines to bar psychologists from using their calling for the "commercial manipulation and exploitation of children."
Kanner, in an interview with Media Life, says, "It's not our profession's business to try to sell things to people. It's to try to help people, and the purpose of advertising to children is not to help them, it's to sell them a product." He charges that advertisers and advertising agencies are paying psychologists--on staff and as consultants--to develop a sophisticated understanding of childrens' needs and relationships, the better to manipulate them.
Media Life has asked a number of people in media research to comment on the letter and its frontal attack on children's advertising.
Here are some of their responses:
Joe Abruzzo, executive director of research at Young & Rubicam:
"I think that the people who wrote this letter have overstated the case. Advertising isn't necessarily manipulative. There's a basic role of making people aware of and creating interest in the products that are being sold.
A basic thing in strategic marketing is understanding the needs of the consumer. That's not manipulative. And understanding the needs of children, and of how to communicate with them, is necessary. I can't buy the blatant manipulation, and of course stretching the truth about a product or overpromising is a problem, but as long as the advertising is truthful, and doesn't use images that harm children's values, that's not bad or manipulative."
Susan Nathan,
head of research at McCann-Erickson and chair of the 4As research committee:
"What we attempt to do in our research is understand what people do.
When we do kids stuff, we are always careful how we handle and research them. It doesn't
seem to me that using psychologists to help us understand how to talk to kids is a bad
thing.
"Besides, there are a hell of a lot more important issues
involving kids than whether ad agencies are doing something underhanded. There are other
issues, like programming, that are much more serious."
Ellen Oppenheim, senior vice president and media director at Foote Cone
&Belding:
"It's an issue the psychological profession has to
deal with. From a personal standpoint, if there is something subliminal being done in a
children's ad, I do have a problem with it. But while I've seen clients get very tough
with their competitors, I've never seen a client trying to put one over on the
consumer--adults or children--because the risk is too great."
David Poltrack, executive vice president for research and planning at
CBS:
"You have to be careful when it comes to research with
children. There has to be a level of responsibility. But if you are talking about products
and services that in themselves are not harmful to children, and which they enjoy, then if
you are just trying to find ways to sell these things to them, I don't thing there's
anything wrong.
"On the other hand, if you're talking about products or services
that could harm them, then the research could harm them and the advertisements could harm
them, too.
"If the research is designed to manipulate children,
to deceive them, then the whole process is bad. At CBS, we try to limit significantly any
confusion between advertising and programming. We always put in bumpers to protect kids.
We don't allow ads to run into programs because the child needs to know they've gone from
a program to an advertisement.
"We accept that children don't have the same kind of built-up resistance
to advertising that adults have, so we don't allow the same kinds of things in advertising
for kids that we allow for adults."
Barry Ornstein, senior researcher at Hill Holiday Connors Cosmopulos:
"Should psychologists have their own kind of Hippocratic oath? I don't know. That's
their business.
"But we are in the business of manipulating people, and the
question is are we going to manipulate them in a good way or a bad way.
"You cannot separate psychology from what we do in advertising research.
How can you do research without a psychological component?
"And like any tool, psychology can be used well or
badly."
Debbie Solomon, senior partner and group research director, J. Walter
Thompson, and chair of the Advertising Research Foundation's Youth Council:
"How we do research is part of the issue. We are developing guidelines for doing
children's research, and one of those guidelines is ethics.
"I agree that marketers have to be responsible, because children
aren't adults and shouldn't be manipulated. You shouldn't take advantage of them.
"For example, I've seen a lot of research that asks kids to
do things that kids can't do, and in terms of ethical problems, there is research that
asks kids to tell them things that their parents do, asks them about things that their
parents may not want to be public knowledge, or asks them about subjects that their
parents may not want discussed, like sex or drugs.
"There are a lot of agencies and kids' marketing firms that have
psychologists on staff and on retainer. My own background is in psychology, and there are
lots of psychology PhDs who go to work in agencies. But all the ones I know are
responsible, concerned individuals who do not want to manipulate kids.
"It's true that there's been a lot more marketing to
kids over the last five years. Take computers or apparel or travel, and this year
financial services!
"But I don't think that manipulative ads are as big a
problem as the critics are saying.
"It's true that this is a materialistic culture, and marketers in
general may be partly responsible for that, but there are many other influences too."
-David Lindorff covers television and research for
Media Life.