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Journal of Marketing Mana gement, 2003,19, 433-457
Alice Bartholomew and Everything Under Control: A
Stephanie O Donohoei* Child s Eye View
of
A dvertising
Research
on
children s response
to
advertising
is dominated
by
positivistic
and
quantitative
approaches and often addresses children s
failure
to
understand advertising
in an
adult
manner. This paper suggests that reliance
on
Piaget s theory
of
child development
has
restricted
research
on children and advertising,
and calls
for
more attention
to be
given
to
theorists such
as
Erikson
who
offer broader
accounts incorporating social
and
cultural
issues.
The
paper builds
a
case
for
viewing
children
as
active, socially
and
culturally
™ ,- . . r^i- 1 ,
situated consumers
of
advertising
by
The University of Edinburgh ^
. .
• T J J J
^
• °
reviewing meaning-based,
reader response
and
literacy approaches
to
advertising.
It
reports
on
a
qualitative study (using ph oto diaries,
individual interviews and small friendship
group discussions) which sought
a
ch ild s
eye
view
of
advertising experiences among
10-12
year-olds.
The
children shared
a
drive
to
obtain
and
demonstrate power
in
their
everyday lives, and this led them to seek
mastery, control
and
critical distance
in
their
dealings with advertising.
The
study s
implications
are
considered
for
advertising
practitioners, researchers
and
public policy
makers.
Kejrwords advertising to children, advertising literacy, interpretive
research, reader, response theory
ntroduction
Replete with descriptions of children as vulnerable , naive , and
powerless , the literature on children and advertising conjures emotive
images of meek children at the mercy of mighty advertisers. Many parents.
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434 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
educators, and pressure groups believe that advertisers exploit children's
credulity and lack of experience, and that advertising-induced demands lead
to family tension s and conflict (Gun ter and Furnh am , 1998).
Much research in this area assumes that children lack the sophistication
and maturity needed to cope with advertising - a view of child-as-innocent,
adve rtiser-as-seducer (Young 1990,1998). This focus on children in terms of
what they lack, and as more or less incompetent compared to adults, is
heightened by the pervasive application of Piaget's theory of child
development (Buckingham 1993). Furthermore, the prevalence of effects
perspectives and linear-sequential models of influence (Bjurstrom 1994) has
led to positivistic, quantitative research presenting children as passive
receivers of advertising. Experimental methods and laboratory studies are
the norm, with little attention paid to children's perspectives or their social
and cultural backgrounds.
The shortcomings of prior research were recently highlighted by Lawlor
and Prothero (2002), who make a powerful case for adopting a child's
perspective and a non-comm ercial and meaning-based approach when
researching children's understanding of advertising intent. They note for
example that whilst researchers examine children's appreciation of
adv ertisers' intent, children themselves may no t view adve rtising simply as a
purchasing catalyst. In this paper, we seek to build on their work in two
ways.
First, we review literature on child development and advertising
literacy to strengthen the case for meaning-based, contextual research on
children's understanding of advertising. Second, we report on a qualitative
study of 10-12 year-olds' experiences of advertising. When researching
children in the social sciences, G raue and W alshe (1998:7) insist that.
The lens of research m ust zoom in to a shot of the situa ted child. Her life is
more than an interchangeable backdrop - it is part of the picture, lending
life to the image portrayed by the researcher.
W hilst w e share their interest in the situated child, w e sou ght to look throu gh
the eyes of a child rather than the lens of adult researchers. We attempted
this quite literally, giving children cameras to highlight important aspects of
their lives. Before outlining our methodology, however, we consider
children 's und ersta nd ing of adve rtising a nd issues of advertising literacy.
Chi ld Deve lopm ent and Chi ldren s Understanding of A dvert i s ing
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild s Eye View of Ad vertising 435
that preschoolers can make crude distinctions between TV advertising and
prog ram me s. The age at w hich children appea r capable of relating the basic
content of advertising to shopping ranges from two to five. Around the age
of six, children realize that ads exist to inform as well as to amuse, and eight
year olds tend to know that advertisers provide information in an
advocatory, rhetorical way. By middle to late childhood, there is usually an
un dersta ndin g of ad vertising s advocatory, informative, and rhetorical
functions. By then .
The child has grown up and the easy metaphors of innocence and
immaturity, being subject to the onslaught of advertising, cannot be used
(Young
1998:
31)
The shadow of Jean Piaget looms large over the literature on children and
advertising, with his four-stage theory of child development (Piaget 1968)
dom inating theoretical and em pirical stud ies (Young 1990; Gun ter and
Furnham 1998; Law lor and Proth ero 2002). Desp ite Piag et s influence on the
advertising literature, many developmental psychologists believe that his
methods and interpretations led him to underestimate or misconstrue
child ren s thinkin g, and that different tests can indicate greater com petence
at youn ger ages (Donaldson, 1978; W ood, 1988). Two criticisms of P iaget s
wo rk are particularly relevant to this paper. H is theory holds that c hildren s
thinking is different in kin from th at of m ature ind ividu als. W artella et al.
(1981) have pointed out that it is essentially a theory of deficits. Thus,
research in this traditio n tends to explain findings in terms of child ren s
inabilities and inadequacies, neglecting children s ow n perspectives
(Buckingham 1993). Fu rtherm ore, altho ugh Piaget did not ignore social
influences on develop ment, he focused on children as indiv idual scientists
who formulate and test hypotheses about their experiences (Smith, Cowie
and Blades 1998).
Thus,
it seems that P iaget s dom inance w ithin the m arketing literature has
not been particularly healthy, offering a partial and perhaps pessimistic
picture of children s pow ers w ith respect to ad vertising. A broader
perspective was provided recently by Roedder John (1999). Synthesizing
Piaget s stages w ith theories of information-processing and social
developm ent, she bu ilds a framew ork of children s co nsum er socialization
comp rising three ov erlapping stages: perceptual (from 3 to 7 years),
analytical (from 7 to 11 years) and reflective (from 11-16 years). Impressive
as her synthesis is, there is plenty of scope for marketers to venture further
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436 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onohoe
from various potholes. To reach a fuller appreciation of children's
un ders tand ing of advertising, it seems that w e need to veer off the road, a nd
make our ow n way arou nd other theories of child develop me nt.
Useful antidotes to Piaget's focus on the individual child's cognitions are
provided by various theorists. For example, Erik Erikson's (1950, 1987)
psychosocial model considers the social and cultural context of child
developm ent. He described the epigenesis or gro und plan of hu m an
psychological growth in terms of eight potential conflicts: trust versus
mistrust (birth to one year), autonomy versus shame and doubt (one to three
years),
initiative versus guilt (four to five yea rs), industry versus inferiority (6
to 11 years), identity v ersus identity confusion (12 to 18 years), intimacy
versus isolation (early adulthood), generativity versus self-absorption
(middle adulthood), and integrity versus despair (old age). Resolution of
each conflict creates a new ly em ergen t part of ou r total personality. As we
deve lop and face these conflicts, our rad ius of significant relations exp and s
from maternal figures and family to include school, neighbourhood, peer and
outg roup s, partne rs and eventually ma nkind. Given this pap er's focus on
10-12 year-olds, the stages most relevant to this age group are ouflined
below.
Before children can become biological parents, they must learn to be
wo rkers and pro viders. In school, children receive systematic instruction
and develop a sense of
industry.
The conflict h ere is betw een the joy of w ork
which provides power and mastery, and a sense of inf riority resulting from
unfav ourab le com parisons with other children . Resolving this conflict
involves cooperating with others so that a sense of competence and
achievement emerges from the successful completion of tasks. Adolescents
on the other hand face the turmoil of puberty and the apparently intangible
tasks of adult life. They attempt to resolve the conflict between
identity
and
identity confusion
and to align their own gifts with the occupational
pro totyp es available to them . Seeking self-definition, they turn to one
another, forming cliques and stereotyping themselves, their ideals and their
enemies. Adolescents seek the particular strength oi fidelity the opportunity
to fulfill personal potential whilst remaining true to themselves and
significant others.
Erikson's wo rk is not w ithout criticism. His identity crisis has been
questioned on a num ber of counts, for example. Smith et al.. (1998) note th at
it can occur throughout adult life and is often quite prominent in early adult
years.
Furthermo re, changes in most you ng peop le's identity an d self-esteem
are gradual. Indeed, references to developmental 'stages' leave Erikson
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 437
less successfully, with the balance among them becoming the foundation for
the next stage. Unresolved conflicts m ay need to be revisited later.
The fluidity of Erikson's stages, together with his emphasis on social
interaction, human strengths and potential, provide a useful contrast to the
presumed inadequacies approach of Piaget's theory in considering children's
relationships w ith adv ertising (Wartella et al. 1981, Buck ingham 1993). The
following section considers the active nature of those relationships and their
social and cultural contexts.
dvertising Literacy
As Oates, Blades and Gunter (2002) observe, the concept of advertising
literacy is useful in addressing w hat it me ans to unde rstan d advertising. The
term has been used in published w ork for two decades. Early accounts by
advertising practitioners described literacy as consumer sophistication in
decoding advertising (Meadows 1983, Lannon 1985). Young's (1990)
app roach is more theoretically inform ed. He relates child ren 's acquisition of
advertising literacy skills to their developing linguistic and
m etacom mu nicative abilities. M oving into middle childhood, children
learn to stand back and consider the workings of language and
comm unication, including other peop le's perspectives and mo tivations. As
their understanding of language use and the intentions behind it develop,
they learn to look beyond literal interpretations and consider devices such as
metaphor, hyperbole, understatement, humour and irony. These
developments inform children's understanding of advertising, since such
language uses are prevalent in advertising.
Buckingham (1993) found evidence of seven to twelve year-olds'
adve rtising literacy as part of his examination of children and television. Far
from being pow erless victims of ideological m anip ulatio n , these children
emerged as active and cynical. All the grou ps except one of the young est
defined advertising as a means of selling products, and generally
emphasised the persuasive functions of advertising. They commented on
advertisers' intentions and target audiences, the quality of particular
advertising executions, techniques and representations of reality. Indeed, the
focus group s w ere often a forum for a kind of com petitive display of cynical
wit at the expense of prod ucts and advertisem ents (p.353). Aligning his
results with Young's (1990) view of advertising literacy, Buckingham viewed
the children 's judge m ents about advertising as manifestations of
metalinguistic competencies .
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438 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
approaches to advertising consumption, reader-response and active audience
theories. Mick and Buhl (1992) suggest that our interpretations of ads are
informed by our life experiences, value s and roles. Their study of three
Danish brothers offers empirical as well as theoretical support for the notion
that [t]he m otivations and m eanings of life are mirrored in the mo tivations
and meanings of advertising experiences (p.336).
Mick and Buhl acknowledge their debt to reader-response theories drawn
from literary criticism wh ich address how a text wo rks with the probable
kno wledge, expectations, or motives of the reade r (Scott, 1994: 463). A text's
meaning, then, is not given but constructed as the reader interacts with it.
While many different readings are possible, readers do not exist in isolation;
they are mem bers of various interp retive com m unities (Fish 1980), sharing
reading strategies and ap plying learned textual conventions.
Appleyard (1991) takes a reader-response approach in exploring how
children become book readers. He proposes that as we m ature, our read ing
roles shift from 'Player' and 'He ro or He roine', to 'Thinker', 'Interpreter', and
'Pragmatic reader'. As preschoolers listen to stories, for example, they
become players in fantasy worlds which they gradually learn to control.
Schoolchildren become central figures in a romance which they constantly
rewrite as their picture of the world develops. Stories present an alternative,
less ambiguous world than that of pragmatic experiences, and so they
imm erse themselves in it. Adolescent readers approach stories as thinkers,
seeking authentic role models, values and beliefs worthy of commitment,
and insights into life's mean ing. Thus, A pp leyard 's developm ental
framework offers tantalising glimpses of children as active readers of
adv ertising texts. Clark (1999:85) argu es that children have agency and
impa ct in creating ad m eanings; their reading s draw on their experiences
and expectations of products, the narrative genre and symbolic elements of
advertising.
Recent academic discussions of advertising literacy build on these
perspectives, considering consumers' literacy skills as they are practised in
everyday life. For example, O'Donohoe and Tynan (1998) discussed how
young adults' literacy skills allowed them to adopt three roles - competent
consumers, surrogate strategists and casual cognoscenti - in their dealings
w ith ads and adv ertising. Crucially, their ability to switch betw een roles
allowed them to step outside the consumption role which advertisers
intended for them. Indeed, in an earlier paper, O'Donohoe (1994) identified
various non-marketing uses and gratifications which they obtained from
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 439
attitudes and values. Understanding ads was sometimes a source of ego-
enhancement, and often a means of negotiating status and relationships with
others.
Ritson and Elliott (1995) highlight social aspects of advertising experience
by applying to advertising theories of literacy practices (Scribner and Cole
1981) and events (Heath 1983). Their pr ctice account of advertising literacy
refers not only to our ability to understand and create meanings from ads,
but also to the particular purposes which that reading serves. Their
v nts
account represents the social consumption of ad meaning - the interactions
and talk surrounding an ad after reception. They illustrate this in a later
paper reporting on an ethnographic study exploring the social uses of
advertising among sixth-form stu dents (Ritson and Elliott 1999). W atching
ads was a prerequisite for participation in ad-based interaction with their
peers,
and the ability to provide a meaningful interpretation of advertising
texts was a source of social power. The teenagers revealed their particular
viewpoints and identities to others by their evaluations and discussions of
liked and disliked ads. They also used ad vertising as a basis for ritualistic
interactions with others and as a source of metaphors for influencing the
perceptions of others and the pecking ord er within social gro ups.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence on children's use of literacy skills,
particularly for those who are not yet teenagers. However, several studies
indicate the active nature of children's relations with advertising. Thus,
observational research conducted by Reid and Frazer (1980a, 1980b) showed
how children used ads to draw others into conversations and activities, to
seek help from parents or siblings in interpreting complex messages, and to
avoid parental demands. Buckingham (1993) offers an interesting perspective
on children's use of TV advertising to obtain ideas for Christmas presents.
He argues for a reversal of the conventional wisdom on causality:
commercials do not create requests, but the need to generate product
requests requires m ore in-depth view ing of advertising. Finally, a study for
advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (Mathews 1995) indicates that
children use advertising for information or entertainment, as a source of
ideas for play or topics for conversation, to impress friends, to buy things for
themselves or persu ade p arents to do so.
Overall, then, meaning-based, reader response and advertising literacy
theories provide a useful perspective on children's active, socially and
culturally situated advertising experiences. The next section describes a
study drawing on these perspectives.
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440 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
sought to look on advertising more thoroughly through the consume r's
eyes (Mick an d Buhl 1992: 317), an d in the contex t of their bro ader life-
w orlds . Mick and Buhl interviewed each of three Dan ish brothers a bou t
their experiences of particular ads, subsequently conducting life history
interviews with them. We adapted their method, taking a child-centred
appro ach. Same-sex friendship grou ps of three formed the basis of the study ,
which used a combination of photo diaries, individual interviews and small
group discussions.
Following a pilot study, research w as cond ucted in a Scottish city betw een
1998 and 1999 with 39 children aged 10-12. Ch ildren in this age grou p a re
generally considered able to appreciate advertising's commercial purposes
(Young 1998; Boush et al. 1994; Gunte r an d F urn ham 1998). Inde ed, M oore
and Lutz (2000:44) suggest that their
...relatively recently enhanced interpretive powers were allowing them a
deeper appreciation of the multiplicity of meanings that ads can convey,
and they were enjoying the exercise of this capacity.
The children in this study were either in P7, the last year of prim ary school or
SI,
the first year of secondary school. Hobson (1999) describes this tran sition
as moving from being king of the castle to one of the babies again .
Indeed, a recent report by HM Inspectors of Schools (1997) notes that the
move from primary to secondary school coincides with physical and
emotional changes as puberty approaches. Thus, 10-12 year-olds may have a
rich and complex relationship with advertising, since their cognitive abilities
are dev elopin g at a time of significant physical, emotiona l and social change .
Children were initially recruited through a school summer playscheme
where the first author worked as a volunteer. Three different schools were
subsequently chosen to reflect the diversity of children's experiences and life
chances: a private school (simply referred to as Priv ate ), the state school
(called Corby here) associated w ith the playschem e, wh ich served a
broadly middle-class suburban population, and another ( Wetheral ) in a
much less affluent area (60-70% of its primary school children received free
school meals). In each school, four friendship gro up s of three took par t in
the study - tw^o P7 groups (one male, one female) and tw^o SI groups (again
one male, one female). School, parental and child consent was sought and
obtained for each stage of the study. Same-sex groups were used to reflect
natural patterns of social interaction amongst older primary schoolchildren
(Opie 1993) and to avoid problem s of cross-gender com mu nications betw een
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 441
contexts prod uce different types of stories.. .and different reper toires of social
comp etencies (Green and H art 1999), interviews and g rou p discussions took
place in the children's ho mes. Althou gh school is a large part of children's
lives,
we sought to frame our study away from the formal educational
context it represents.
At an icebreaker session held at the play scheme or school, each child
was given a disposable camera, shown how to work it, and asked to
complete a ph oto diary featuring pictures of their bedro om and people,
things and activities important to them. Once this had been done, the
researcher called to their homes to collect the cameras. This provided another
opportunity to meet the children (and their parents) informally, this time on
their home ground . Two sets of photo graphs w ere developed. One was
given to the children and the other was used to drive phenomenological
interviews (Thompson et al. 1989) about their life-worlds. These interviews
lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, with most taking over an hour.
Incorporating the photoelicitation technique of autodriving (Heisley and
Levy 1991) gave us a w indo w on the children 's everyday lives, including the
bedro om culture so imp ortant to you ng people's developing identities
(Brown et al. 1994). It gave u s quite literally a child's eye view , and it mean t
that they, not we, set the agenda for discussing the people, things and
activities important to them.
Following the individual interviews, group discussions (generally lasting
between an hour and an hour and a half) were conducted. Researchers have
used focus groups to explore children's understanding of advertising
regulations (Preston 2000) and suggested their value in examining children's
understanding of advertising intent (Oates et al. 2002). Group discussions
were considered particularly appropriate here. They can communicate
respect and a lack of condescension to participants (Morgan and Kreuger
1993),
encouraging them ...to generate their own questions, frames and
concepts and to pursue their ow^n priorities on their own terms, in their own
vocab ulary (Barbour and Kitzinger 1999). Small friendship gro up s w ere
used to put children at ease (Harris and Ward 2000), and to reflect the natural
context of social life (Barbour and Kitzinger 1999). The discussions began by
asking the children to talk about any ads which they particularly liked or
disliked. In the pilot study, some children were reluctant to volunteer ads
off the top of their heads . Therefore, each child was asked to compile in
advance an ad list of at least eight ads they rem em bered. During the focus
groups, individual accounts of particular ads quickly gave way to lively
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442 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'Do nohoe
discussion tended to last between fifteen and twenty minutes, generating
detailed suggestions as well as comm ents abou t particular adv ertising styles,
strategies and conventions. Tow ards the end of the sessions, they w ere asked
to talk about some print ads which they had collected and given to the first
auth or at the time of the ind ividual interview s. These were generally taken
from magazines related to particular interests (typically music, sports, and
computer games), and discussion revolved around what had struck them
about the ads. Drawing on fresh examples at this stage often allowed issues
raised earlier to be revisited and discussed further. Over the course of the
group discussions, then, using the ad lists.
pike
exercise and print ads gave
the children several opportunities to express various facets of their
understandings and experiences with respect to advertising.
All interviews and group discussions were transcribed, yielding 1,400
pages of text to be loaded into the qualitative analysis package QSR
NUD*IST Vivo. Following T hom pson et al. (1989), a phenomenological, part-
to-whole interpretation was undertaken, beginning with each life-world
transcript and moving out towards the advertising discussions.
indings
Meeting the children, entering their homes, listening to them describe their
photos, and an alysing the transcripts, it became appa rent that they shared an
existential concern (Mick and Buhl 1992) with establishing and presenting to
the world an independen t, competent self Although h um an beings generally
seek a sense of power and control (Gleitman 1991) this quest may be
particularly urg ent for children. Existing w ithin an adu lt-run w orld m ay
lead to feelings of powerlessness and fantasies about power and achievement
(M atthews 1995, Eden 2000). Less extreme than Nietzsch e's will to pow er ,
the drive identified here relates to school-aged children's need to resolve the
industry-irvferiority conflict (Erikson 1987).
The children had considerable command of advertising content and
concepts. In keeping with the advertising literacy perspective outlined
earlier, we do not focus on their skills in isolation, but on how these were
used to construct and communicate a sense of themselves as powerful
agents. The ubiquity of advertising gave the children com mo n grou nd and
much raw material in this respect. The discussion below^ revolves aro un d
three dimensions of power identified in the research - mastering, controlling
and criticizing - and how^ these shaped the children's experiences of
advertising.
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 443
competence: their photo diaries contained many close-ups of themselves
prac ticing wee skills w ith their bikes, roller blade s and football skills, and
they talked w ith pride abo ut wh at they were able to do. Mental skills w ere
also valued, as highlighted by one girl's favourite T-shirt featuring the w ord s
You are no ma tch for my superior intellect . Superior intellect wa s not
always associated with academic performance, but with detailed and often
obscure knowledge of subjects ranging from celebrities to motorbikes and
reptiles. Linked to the pleasure of demonstrating mastery to others was the
desire to win an d be the BEST . T heir bedro om s and ph otos bore witness to
this desire, with medals, trophies, and certificates often displayed
prominently and discussed with pride.
The children's possessions (and the contents of their bedrooms in
particular) were implicated in the drive for mastery. Like the young people
interviewed by Csikzentimihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981), they
highlighted possessions focusing on active, instrumental and self-related
concerns. Important items, such as sports equipment, bedroom media and
special collections, emerged as extensions of the self (Belk 1988) and reflected
Erikson's (1987) central task in middle childhood of gaining competence and
confidence through making, doing and building.
Ad Masters
Like the young people in other studies (O'Donohoe and Tynan 1998;
Ritson and Elliott 1999), the childre n emerge d as d masters using advertising
to demonstrate their interpretive and cultural competence. As discussed
below, playing the part of ad masters required three subsidiary roles to be
adop ted :
meaning masters style masters
a n d
performance masters.
As meaning masters the children understood that ads contained a
m essage or poin t , and they often used phra ses such as wh ich is me ant
to represe nt . Like the com petent con sum ers identified by O'D onoho e and
Tynan (1998), they enjoyed the challenge of w ork ing out w ha t the y're trying
to say . Several children boasted that they had got complex ads the first
time , or even the second time, actually because the first time I w asn't really
looking . Getting the ad often mea nt und erstand ing the point being
made about the featured brand, but in some cases the advertiser's identity
was crucial. For exam ple, one P7 girl tested her friends' in terpre tive skills by
showing them a Hewlett Packard ad featuring an old pair of trainers, but
hiding the bra nd na m e. W hen they guessed incorrectly, she revealed the
brand, saying
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444 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
air freshener and then it's actually an advert for Hewlett Packard. (Girls,
P7,
private)
When meanings were not understood, confessions such as that from a P7
Corby girl that "I haven't actually got that, I don't understand it" were made
reluctantly and meekly, often ' followed by an em barrassed laugh. This
suggests that the children, like the teenagers and young adults in earlier
studies, experienced the satisfaction of possessing interpretive power and
feelings of inadequacy w hen it could not be displayed. The children also
displayed their skills in interpreting and manipulating advertising meaning
through the ads they suggested for Spike Several children thought the brand
name implied that the product contained alcohol, "cos like you spike
people's drinks". They suggested m any ways of drama tising the brand,
including "a hedgehog with lots of fruit stuck to its spikes". They also
recognized advertising's intertextuality (Cook 1992): a dog named Spike
from the Rugrats cartoon w as suggested as an end orser by several g roup s,
and some boys a dap ted a Spice Girls song to create a jingle
SPIKE up your life... Every boy, every girl... Ooooooo ooooh [laughter]
(Boys, SI, W etheral)
Beyond the creative task, discussions of intertextuality included descriptions
of ads for Walkers crisps playing with footballers' personas, such as Vinnie
Jones's "hard m an" and Gary Lineker's "Mr Good Gu y". Indeed,
commenting on the Salt and Lineker pack marketed by Walkers, one group
remarked "It'll be Smokey eckham next ".
The children's discussions of ads highlighted other areas of competence.
Their awareness of various approaches earned them the title style masters
For example, they categorized music into 'cheesy' jingles, pop songs, "70s
music", and "posh" or classical music. They also commented that music
could be used to "attract your attention", "catch in your head" or "help you
concentrate on w ha t's actually trying to be sold". H um oro us styles we re also
dissected, with distinctions made betw^een 'stupid', 'silly', 'embarrassing',
'bizarre' and 'rud e' executions, for example. "Ru de" and "stu pid" a ds held
greater appeal for the boys than for the girls, who tended to present
themselves as above such things.
The children also demonstrated mastery of ad styles through their
suggested ads for Spike Approaches based on themes of obsession and
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of A dvertising 445
smothered all over his face".
Spike
w as also p resen ted as a catalyst for
transform ation. This som etimes took the form of transpo rting drin kers from
apathy and boredom to a vibrant party atmosphere, or from social isolation
to acceptance. For example, an SI girl from private school proposed an ad
portraying someone covered in spikes who was "sort of stared at" until he
drank Spike and was shown "playing snooker or something with all his
mates in the bar". One of the most po pula r approach es, how ever, wa s to
portray the drink as transforming someone's performance. Thus a group of
P7 Corby girls made an interesting association between Spike and the
Olympic sport of javelin throwing, suggesting the ad portray an athlete's
performance being transformed by drinking Spike Such suggestions
highlight not only the children's mastery of advertising styles, but also the
allure of the mastery them e in ad content. Ad s showing ch ildren in positions
of power and authority were often recalled and recounted in detail,
particularly w^hen they showed children controlling adults. Particularly well-
received was an for Dairy Lea (cheese spread) where a child "shrinks the
teacher down to a small little miniature thing ".
The third ad master role adopted by the children was that of perform nce
masters
As Buckingham (1993) also found, the children derived great
pleasure from acting out ads, singing jingles, and repeating catchphrases.
Cries of "This tastes BOGGIN'", "You beauty ", or "Let's see that again"
suffused the discussions, and came complete with amplified accents and
manic movements. Budweiser's frog ads were regularly imitated as a
com plete artistic work by boys and girls of both ages. Th oug h it is ha rd to
recreate on the page eleven year-olds imitating American frogs, this was a
typical rendition:
D:
But w ha t abou t the other one, the Budw eiser one? "BUD WEIIS ERR"
[imitates in low, deep croaky voice].
A: Yeah, the re's a Bud weiser right. An d all the frogs' right they're all
sitting on little lily pa ds . An d they 're going "BUD WEIIS....". They're
trying to say Budweiser... [All laughing while he describes and imitates
it].
And the n they start going "BUD WEIIS BUD". And then they go
"BUD WEIIS BUD WEIIS ERR". An d by the end ano ther frog goes.
"ERR" and they go "URR". "BUD WEIIS ERR "
D:
And the re's anothe r one w hen the frog's looking for a girlfriend and
he goes "BUD" [imitates low croaky voice]. And he goes ho pp ing along
the lily pad . And then he hears "WEIIS" [imitates high female voice].
And then he jumps along because he's following the voice...And then he
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446 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
Various developmental theorists have linked play with the achievement of
com petence (Smith et al. 1998). This certainly seem ed the case here: imitating
characters and singing jingles were regarded as distinct skills to be acquired,
displayed and ad mired. This wa s underlined by comm ents such as Yeah, L.
is really good at Budweiser . Narrating ad storylines also appeared to be a
value d skill. Great emphasis was placed on the correct recall of plots,
charac ters, visual and verbal elem ents, often in m inute detail. The
discussions were therefore characterised by regular interruptions and
corrections made by other members of the group.
on trollin
The second dimension of power, controlling, was seen in the children's
desire for independence and their attempts to distance themselves from
childhood. Various photographs showed the children as employees or pet
owners, and they emphasised responsibilities such as delivering newspapers,
cleaning rabbit hutches and feeding pets. They photographed and talked
proudly about possessions such as bicycles which gave them a sense of
independence. There were also many references to going shopping or to
school unaccompanied by parents. Independence from parents was also
expressed through the moulding of their appearance. For example, one
grou p discussed a classmate w ho wore pink to please her m other and did n't
really make her own decisions . The ripping of psychic umbilical cords was
almost audible in the following exchange:
J: Like J is like a mummy's girl [others groan]. Like she will do anything
for her mu m ...An d like her m um wa nts her to wear pink n on-stop, so she
does it...She doesn't really make her own decisions...Her mum makes all
the decisions...I know like our mums do want to like look after us and
things but -
L: W e've got to make ou r ow n choice.
J: You 're just not going to wea r p ink every day.
A: ...Her mum used to, like when I used to go to her house and things, I
used to chose my own clothes and her mum, she used to like lay out her
clothes for her. And if she did n't wear that she w^ould get a ro w ...
J: And she 's eleven and she still has to do it.... (Girls, P7, Corby ).
Reflecting the control it offers, money was a popular topic of discussion.
Great emphasis was placed on pocket money rising with age; one girl
complained bitterly that her two younger brothers received the same amount
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 447
this way here. Playing the hero or heroine (Appleyard 1991), the children
seemed to immerse themselves in the fear experience and test their courage.
There was also much discussion of roUercoaster rides: many children
recounted with glee their own bravery in marked contrast to their
"feardycat" parents
Ad Controllers
Reflecting their sense of being in control, the children often presented
themselves as ad avoiders Thus, many children, particularly in Wetheral,
initially claimed that they "dinnae really watch adverts". They then
accounted for their recall of many ads in great detail by saying that "you see
so many ads", and "they're just hard to avoid". However, they saw
themselves as attending to ads selectively, with a variety of strategies at their
disposal. For exam ple:
E: If there's anythin g on like that Landm ark one with that ann oying jingle
I just turn the TV off. I m ean problem solved
L: I just wa lk ou t of the room cos most of the time other people are
watching. . .
E: I tend to put m y fingers in my ears but it doe sn't wo rk so I bury my
head und er the couch. (Girls, SI, private)
The children also adopted the role of in epen ent consumers Unanimously
claiming that advertising did not influence them, they emphasized their
control over purchasing decisions. Many ads were "rubbish" or "boring", but
it w as conceded that advertising often "m akes you lau gh". This sense of
separate ad and brand consumption (Nava and Nava 1990) seemed another
way for the children to experience pow er over the text. Indeed, consistent
with Pollay's (1986) "myth of personal immunity", they shared with
Buckingham's (1993) informants the belief that advertising influenced others
rather than them selves. The children sometimes presented them selves as
more knowledgeable, informed and restrained than adults. Thus, P7 boys
from Corby claimed that "Dad just watches them and buys things", and that
one of their mothers came out of the supermarket with "ten trolley loads of
stu
after watching ads. Those most susceptible to advertising however
we re thou ght to be "youn g children", "four or five year-olds", "k ids" or "my
wee brother". Thus, an SI boy from W etheral told a story he had heard about
a "wee laddie" who "grated his heid^" copying an animated character in a
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448 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
I: Do you often feel that yo u're m isled by ads?
D: Yeah but I do n't believe them anym ore.
I: So wh y d on 't you believe them now?
A: Because w e're eleven years old
D:
Because we 're not dum b now
A: We used to be [laughs]. (Boys, P7, Corby)
Criticising
The children often presented themselves as detached onlookers of the
media, keen to criticise and analyse media content and the degree of
"realism " presented . This reflects A pp ley ard 's (1991) role of the reader as
thinker in adolescence, when a crucial yardstick for assessing stories is the
extent to which they are true to life. Thus, the TV programme
riends
w as
liked because it was "so realistic", whereas one of the appeals of The Simpson
was that generally "the things that happen on it couldn't really happen in
real life, wh ich makes it funny as well". The children also used measures of
realism to reassure themselves when watching horror films, reminding each
other that they were "not real life". Some deconstructed the action by
focusing on special effects or the gen re's con vention s:
I liked
Scream
but that wasn't that scary, it was kinda corny cos it was
predictable w hat was going to happ en...ther e's always gonna be an attack
on a girl and she's always gonna be sitting alone, she'll either be w atching
a scary movie or she'll be in her bed. And he'll always phone and he'll go
"helloo" and then he'll say her name and then they'll get freaked... (Boy,
P7,
private).
Such assessments of me dia content a ppe ared to serve as a distancing tool for
the children, giving them greater po w er over the text.
Ad Critics
Critical judgements about advertising established the children researched
by Buckingham (1993) as 'wise consumers', distanced from advertising. As
ad critics, the children in this study shifted between the roles of
precociou
planners tactical technicians an d reality questioners.
Younger versions of "surrogate strategists" (O'Donohoe and Tynan 1998),
the children in this study could be seen as precocious planners. Although an
explanation of advertisers' aims was not directly requested of them (in the
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 449
you r attention and stimulated bran d recall w as also stressed.
Understanding that ads targeted different groups, the children discussed
wa ys of app ealing to different ag es and g ende rs. A ds m ade to app eal to
yotmg children we re thou ght to feature you ng child actors, bright colours
and wee cartoons . Aw are that many ads targeted their age group, they
explained this partly in term s of their future spe ndin g pow er, since w e're
the next generation . To attract their attention, they sugge sted that ads
need ed to be funny , ru de , colourful , original or accom panied by a
good tun e . Ad s directed to boys and girls w ere expected to feature
children of the corresponding gender, although models of the opposite sex,
such as hu nk y me n or a 19 year old girl w ith a really really short skirt ,
could also w ork . Th us, a girl ticked off the com pon ents of effective
advertising for her football-loving, male-obsessed friends:
You just pu t a football one on and the n pu t a Celtic top on, right. Or a
Rangers or H ear ts top , right. A nd you get the BEST-looking, tidiest-
looking gu ys, right, and yo u'v e got it just perfect. (Girls, SI , W etheral)
The children sometimes presented themselves as tactical technicians
discussing and evaluating technical aspects of ads with enthusiasm.
Discussions of stories beh ind ads and explanations of the way they 'd d one
it recalled the 'casual cognescenti' in O'D onoh oe an d Ty nan 's (1998) study.
Thus, footballer Paul Gascoigne's dramatic crying performance in a Walkers
crisps ad w as created by pipe s going up to his eyes wh ich we re later
blanked out . Other tricks , such as reforming crushed cars in insurance
ads, were described in considerable d etail:
...And the way they'd done it is they'd crushed a car and the bloke
advertising it had to learn to talk backwards, and walk backwards, and
get in the car back wa rds a nd things. And it w as just really well done cos
it looked like it had been forward and they made the car out of all the
rubb le. (Girls, SI , private)
A variety of technical details were incorporated into the children's creative
ideas for Spike and they often referred to cam era angles , close-ups ,
clips , split screens , flashbacks , editing or com puter-g ene rated
effects. If they lacked the precise terminology to describe something, they
explained the technical processes in their ow n langu age. Thus a dubbe d
comm ercial took the sound aw ay and pu t different voices in . Regardless of
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450 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoh oe
Young (1998), notes that distinguishing reality from representation is the
foundation of television literacy. For these children, issues of reality often
coloured their views of advertising. There was much discussion about the
convention of product glamorization, with several suggested ads portraying
pik
in an almost sacred light:
An' then he jumps up an' opens the fridge... You see the BIG bottle of
'Spik e' a n' it's all SHINING .... (Boys, P7, Corby)
There appeared to be a fine line between product glamorization and
misrepresentation, however. Consistent with other studies of children
around this age, considerable scepticism about advertising was evident
(Boush et al. 1994; Buckingham 1993; Preston 2000). Some ads were seen to
bear little relation to the prod uc t in reality:
G: But that's another thing, in the McD onalds adve rts they always seem
to have a big massive burger....
N:
... I know they've g ot a hu ge burge r an d w hen you really get it it 's all
small...
(Boys, SI , private)
Such scepticism led to speculation about how advertisers could make
pro du cts look so effective. Discussing a Gillette ad, some girls suggested that
the actor shaved before the ad was filmed. Several children were so
convinced that ads, especially on TV, "just make u p a load of
stuff ,
that they
used terms like "scam" and "set-up" to describe them. Indeed, some had
devised rules for interpreting "false" ads:
"While stocks last", usually means that they don't have any left so they
just w an t you to come to the store and buy. Th at's basically it. (Girls, SI,
private)
Perhaps due to such general scepticism, the children sometimes challenged
the realism of minute details in ads. An SI girl from W etheral criticised a
scene in a Hooch ad wh ere a ma n screamed after being stu ng by a m osquito,
saying "it cannae hurt that much", while her Corby counterpart picked up a
continu ity error in an ad for Herbal Essence sham poo. The ad featured a
woman washing her hair in an airplane toilet, and when she emerged "her
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Everything Under Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Adve rtising 451
life .
This
may be
interpreted
as a
means
of
demonstrating their ability
to
see through advertising's persuasive attempts, and emphasizing that they,
rather than advertisers, were in control.
on lusions
This paper has argued for a contextualised, meaning-based approach to
researching children's ' understanding
of
advertising
and
reported
on a
qualitative study using photo diaries, individual interviews
and
group
discussions to explore 10-12 year-old s' advertising and life-world
experiences.
Whilst this study carmot make claims about
how all or
indeed other,
children interact with advertising, it suggests the depth and richness of 10-12
year-olds' understandings of advertising, and the benefits of research
adopting a child's perspective. Exploring children's understanding of
advertising from their vantage point made visible their ability
to
play
a
number of roles in dealing with it. Three main roles - ad masters, ad
controllers and ad critics - were identified, and within these the children
played many parts. They emerged as meaning masters, style masters, and
performance masters; as ad avoiders and independent consumers; and as
precocious plarmers, tactical technicians,
and
reality questioners. Like
the
young adults discussed
by
O'Donohoe
and
Tynan (1998),
the
children
slipped in and out of these roles as the occasion dem anded, and each role
offered a degree of power in their dealings with advertising.
To some extent,
the
findings here should
not
surprise practitioners,
who
have long argued that children - particularly of the age studied here - are
sophisticated consumers of advertising (Gray 1999 Edling 1999). Some
practitioners have already recognized the impo rtance of the mastery theme
in middle childhood (Mathews 1995), reflecting this
in ads
which offer
children vicarious experiences
of
control.
The
range
of
roles which
the
children adopted
in
relation
to
advertising might still surprise practitioners,
however. The degree of children's cynicism, and the extent to which their
quest for power distances them from advertising's commercial content, may
be a cause for concern. Furthermore, the children's understanding of
advertising themes, techniques and conventions mean that advertisers
cannot afford complacency
or
condescension
to
creep into their advertising
executions
or
research practice.
Policy-makers
may
feel reassu red that these ch ildren
had a
well-
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452 Alice Bartholomew and Stephanie O'D onoho e
children are not as immune to its persuasive power as they believe, this
increases concerns about its insidious influence. Such influence may extend
beyond product desire to the social content of advertising communication
(Leiss et al. 1990). Secondly, the cynicism which the children expressed
about advertising suggest little awareness of or faith in the regulation of
commercial speech. More positively, the study suggests that the playfulness
with which the children approached advertising - and the desire to achieve
mastery - may be harnessed in advertising education.
Turning to implications for theory and research, it seems that rigid tests of
advertising understanding, based on deficit models of child development,
may lead researchers to overlook the sophisticated and quite reflective grasp
of the genre that even the youngest children in this study demonstrated.
This study also suggests that children's advertising literacy skills are
anchored in their broader life-world experiences. In particular, the children's
advertising experiences reflected and were shaped by the drive for power
and control in their everyday lives. The emergence of power as a life theme
(Mick and Buhl 1992) is consistent with Erikson's (1987) view of the conflict
at this life stage between industry and inferiority. In this context, advertising
served as a valuable cultural resource for developing and demonstrating
power.
The advertising roles played by the children echoed those adop ted by the
you ng adu lts in O'Do nohoe and T ynan 's (1998) study , offering some sup po rt
for the popu lar notion of children getting older yo un ger (Gray 1999). This
is not to say that they had grasped all the nuances of advertising strategy and
techniques evident in the young adults' discussion. The young adults also
tended to be more reflective, recognizing for example that advertising might
influence them more than they realized. While there was certainly scope for
refinement in the children's' understanding, firm foundations were evidently
in place. Indeed , it seemed that the children were not just precocious
planners. Their reading of some advertising texts indicated that they were
adopting the position of thinker, which Appleyard (1991) associated with
older adolescents. Similarly, while much of their discussion could be related
to the drive for competence characteristic of their life stage (Erikson 1987),
the quest for fidelity associated with adolescents also seemed well underway.
Many of the children's comments about people, things and advertising
suggested that their identities we re serious works-in-prog ress. If children are
indeed getting older younge r , it is imp ortant that age /sta ge theories of
child dev elopm ent are m onitored - and modified if necessary - to ensure tha t
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Everything Un der Control: A Ch ild's Eye View of Ad vertising 453
difference in understanding was evident across the age, school and gender
divides here. The older children's advertising accounts tended to be more
nuanced, for example, but there certainly appeared to be no massive leap in
understanding between the P7 and SI children. The gradual increase in
detailed understanding is consistent with the findings of Bousch et al. (1994)
regarding early adolescents' schemer schema . In general, regardless of
age, school or gender, the children were united in their quest for power, their
use of advertising to that end, and their versatility in adopting a range of
roles with respect to advertising. Having said that, the Wetheral children
appeared less inclined to adopt the role of reality questioners. This echoes
Buckingham's (1993) finding that working class children were less likely to
perform as cynical, wise con sum ers . H e attributes this not to any
diminished ability to see through advertising on their part, but to their
having less invested in being able to demonstrate such ability. In this study,
the Wetheral children generally appeared less engaged with advertising,
although there were some exceptions, and their interviews and group
discussions tended not to last as long as those from Corby or private school.
This may reflect different attitudes to advertising, but it could also reflect
different educational opportunities relating to expressive style and the
articulation of ideas. It may also reflect the greater social distance between
the W etheral children a nd the first au thor than w as evident elsewhere. In any
case the most striking differences observed in this study were not between
children from different schools, but between boys and girls. However, these
differences related more to the nature and extent of their involvement with
advertising than to their unde rstan din g of the genre. In line w ith the
literature on gendered reading styles (Stern 2000), girls tended to be more
emotionally involved with advertising and more interested in the characters,
music and generally the minutiae of particular ads. Boys, on the other hand,
exhibited a keen interest in the chronological sequence of ads, and in
prov iding precise, hum oro us accounts of these to each other.
Finally, although this has been described as a child's eye study, we should
not delud e ourselves that we can be one with them or cast off our o wn , hard -
earned w orldv iews for theirs (Fine and Sand strom 1988:9). We can howev er
listen, watch and learn, and do so carefully and respectfully. The
photoelicitation technique employed here indicates the potential for enlisting
children mo re actively in the research process. How ever, there is still great
scope for further ethnograp hic studie s in this area. We hop e that our
research has don e m ore than scratch the surface, but there is mu ch m ining to
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454 Al ice Bar tho lom ew and Stephan ie O 'Don oho e
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About the A uthors
Alice Bartholomew carried out her p ostgr adu ate studies at The University of
Edinburgh, where she completed her PhD on children and advertising in
2001.
She has previously worked at The University of Strathclyde as a
researcher on a children's road safety project, and at an Edinburgh-based
advertising agency as an account planner. Alice is currently working as a
freelance qualitative researcher and photographer.
Stephanie O Donoh oe
is a Senior Lecturer in M arketing at The University of
Edinburgh. Her research interests include young consumers' experiences of
advertising, the contribution of the reading metaphor to our understanding
of advertising consumption, and consumption symbolism in bereavement.
Her work has been published in various journals, edited volumes and
conference proceedings. The recent birth of Fergal gives Stephanie a personal
as well as professional interest in child ren 's experiences of adv ertising
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