Stereotypical Humans like groups. We love to sort things into categories so we can deal with them. It is only be natural that advertisers would group adults into groups so they can figure out how to best market products to them. Twitchell explains the VALS system and how groups are used in adult marketing while Schlosser exposes how children are researched and grouped to be used to sway parent product choices. The advertising techniques used are indeed mass stereotyping for both adults and children, and while they have a certain overlap, advertisers use different techniques to snare young and old. Mass stereotyping is all about grouping people in predictable categories. Adults can be grouped by many things such as “marital status, education,
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Who doesn’t like to belong? According to Twitchell, adults can move through as many as 3 different consumption communities throughout their lifetimes. Advertisers keep that in mind, however, and use a kind of passive type of marketing based around inclusiveness: “[P]osition your product in such a place that they will have to fly by it and perhaps stop to roost. After roosting, they will eventually think that this is a part of their flyway and return to it again and again” (Twitchell 183). Advertisers use a similar strategy with children. As with adults, children also feel the need to fit in and companies create webpages and kids’ clubs to promote their products to them: “[T]he clubs appeal to a child’s fundamental need for status and belonging. Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club, formed in 1930, was one of the trailblazers. During the 1980s and 1990s, children’s clubs proliferated …” (Schlosser 225). The sense of belonging, of having an item that makes you fit in gives advertisers quite a bit of …show more content…
There are 8 different groups within the VALS system, and of those only 3 are heavily targeted by advertisers. The other groups are either too poor or too set in their ways to be easily swayed to new items. Advertisers try to sway the ones that are apt to hop brands because, as Twitchell puts in his essay, “The object of advertising is not just to brand parity objects but also to brand consumers as they move through these various communities” and they want people to bring that brand loyalty with them (181). Children don’t, in general, have any money. So why would advertisers target them? Pester power. The nudge factor. Children are targeted not because of what they can buy, but what their parents can buy: “Today children are being targeted by phone companies, oil companies, and automobile companies as well as clothing stores and restaurant chains. The explosion in children’s advertising occurred during the 1980s” (Schlosser 223). Advertisers cannot be as accurate with stereotyping with children as purchasers because how a child develops and acts may not have anything to do with how thrifty his parent is. Since marketers cannot know how much a child can spend they advertise heavily to all groups and all ages of
Who doesn’t like to belong? According to Twitchell, adults can move through as many as 3 different consumption communities throughout their lifetimes. Advertisers keep that in mind, however, and use a kind of passive type of marketing based around inclusiveness: “[P]osition your product in such a place that they will have to fly by it and perhaps stop to roost. After roosting, they will eventually think that this is a part of their flyway and return to it again and again” (Twitchell 183). Advertisers use a similar strategy with children. As with adults, children also feel the need to fit in and companies create webpages and kids’ clubs to promote their products to them: “[T]he clubs appeal to a child’s fundamental need for status and belonging. Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club, formed in 1930, was one of the trailblazers. During the 1980s and 1990s, children’s clubs proliferated …” (Schlosser 225). The sense of belonging, of having an item that makes you fit in gives advertisers quite a bit of …show more content…
There are 8 different groups within the VALS system, and of those only 3 are heavily targeted by advertisers. The other groups are either too poor or too set in their ways to be easily swayed to new items. Advertisers try to sway the ones that are apt to hop brands because, as Twitchell puts in his essay, “The object of advertising is not just to brand parity objects but also to brand consumers as they move through these various communities” and they want people to bring that brand loyalty with them (181). Children don’t, in general, have any money. So why would advertisers target them? Pester power. The nudge factor. Children are targeted not because of what they can buy, but what their parents can buy: “Today children are being targeted by phone companies, oil companies, and automobile companies as well as clothing stores and restaurant chains. The explosion in children’s advertising occurred during the 1980s” (Schlosser 223). Advertisers cannot be as accurate with stereotyping with children as purchasers because how a child develops and acts may not have anything to do with how thrifty his parent is. Since marketers cannot know how much a child can spend they advertise heavily to all groups and all ages of