Juliet B Schhor Selling To Kids

Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool,” by Juliet B. Schor, describes how marketing has had a huge impact on kids. The text is set in a time when children began to be the main focus of advertisements and marketers wanted to please children, teens and tweens. According to Schor, cool is the term that defines a kid to be unique and independent. But “marketers have defined cool as the key to social success (218). Children have been part for a very long time in the consumer market place and by the early 1980’s the government designed a policy to protect kids from advertising. The FTC had tried to ban all advertising from children, but the advertising industries battle back, and unfortunately, they won. The congress didn’t give up and finally they pass the FTC improvement Act of 1980 (James U. McNeal). There are many ways children are being marketed to. The goal of

This has been a dramatic change because in the past children’s consumer culture was a cheap little culture, “penny candy because kids only had pennies” (Schor219). Marketers use many ways to attract young consumers to buy any product they are try to sell, but always having a special or cool product is the ideal item for a kid. “Part of cool is having something that others do not. That makes a kid feel special. (Schor 219). Videos games, shoes, clothing, electronics are some of the materialistic things cool kids want. Commercials and Ads are the main resources marketers use to advertise this expensive, fancy and living a luxurious lifestyle (Schor 220). For example, athletic shoes companies using their product with African American athletes (Schor 220). According to Schor this is one of the biggest strength marketers have to promote any products by using celebrities. Nickelodeon is another example, is a cable network that sells a wide array of products to the younger audience