Download De-advertising/Deadvertising

De-advertising/Deadvertising
Deadvertising is the intentional undoing of
an ad. Advertisements are everywhere, it is
impossible to get away from them. Most ads
are manipulative, demanding and insult your
intelligence.
Ads are designed to influence you – mostly so
that you will spend your money. Most ads try to
make a product look desirable so that you will
want it. Ads promise to make you thinner, bigger,
better, more beautiful, wealthier, younger, tougher
or whatever “er” they think it will take to get you
to spend your money on their product!
Most ads try to make a connection between a
product and stuff that has nothing to do with
the product! That is why many companies try
to get famous people to endorse their
products.
•
Some examples of
deadvertising:
DEADVERTISING
ASSIGNMENT
• Start looking at
advertisements – notice
how they try to
manipulate you into
thinking the product is
great.
• Then choose three
advertisments. Alter or
change each one in a
smart, effective way so
that you actually
Unadvertise the product
News releases and strategic
updates!
More information...
Brain Blinders
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Poster
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Contacts
Website Links
Archive
First In, First Out
Why YNN Sucks
Psychologists Act...
Commercial-free Debate
Students Unincorporated
Brands in Text Books
Coke Day Goes Flat
Channel One Ad
Student Protests McD's
Hey kids, here's a newsflash. You are being sold. You are being sold every
time you walk in the door of your school -- or you soon will be. The
marketing business has put a price on your head, to the tune of $300 billion
a year -- that's what experts believe that people your age collectively spend,
whether it's money out of your own pocket, or the way you influence your
parents' spending habits. So now your compulsory education will come to
include compulsory commercials as ad agencies target you in the one place
you can't tune out.
Take the tour to learn how corporations are targeting students nationwide and how to stop it, or visit our Toolbox to download stickers and
posters to debrand your school.
Here are some examples of commercial-messages entering school curriculum:
* McGraw-Hill prints a six-grade math text book that includes brand names in it's math equations. The book is currently
used in at least 16 US states, building brand loyalty for Nike, Disney, and Burger King, among others. Many school
boards, such as the California State education department, give the book a hearty thumbs-up, finding the book superior
to earlier textbooks because kids recognize and identify with the brand-name touchstones.
* Companies create "free" ready-made lessons for teachers to use on students. Chips Ahoy has a counting game for
little kids where you have to figure the number of chocolate chips in their cookies. Kelloggs has an art project where
you make sculpture out of Rice Krispies. Procter & Gamble sponsors lessons on oral hygiene that include giving away
Crest samples. Campbell's Soup created (then shamefully recalled) a science lesson where students compared the
viscosity of Prego sauce to rival Ragu. The Consumers Union has stated that 80 percent of these "lessons" contain
wrong or misleading information.
* Companies profit by changing the way you think. Representatives of the drug Prozac will come to your school to
"teach" you about depression. Exxon has ecology curriculum that shows how clean the environment of Alaska is. Some
schools actually sell ad space in the hallways, on the sides of school buses, or billboards out in the yard.
* Companies collect information about you at school. In New Jersey, elementary school kids filled out a 27-page
booklet called "my all about me journal," basically a marketing survey for a television channel. Students in
Massachusetts spent two days tasting cereal and answering an opinion poll. ZapMe! corporation puts "free" computers
and internet hookups in schools. Then they monitor your web browsing habits and sell the information, neatly broken
down by age, gender and postal code, to their customers.
* From New Mexico to Nova Scotia, Coke or Pepsi will pay schools $10 to $20 per student to get exclusive rights to sell
their soft drinks to you. What do you get out of it? Lots of advertising plastered around your school, and if you're lucky,
a free Coke or Pepsi t-shirt.
* Channel One gives schools "free" televisions and audio visual equipment. The catch is that you and 8 million other
students have to watch their daily news broadcasts, including the commercials.
* YouthStream has message boards in 7,200 high school locker rooms. They carry product advertisements and try to
sell you on visiting the company's website, where even more advertising can be seen. The boards reach almost 60
percent of US high school students.
Here's what some adults are saying behind your back:
"The advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the bathroom, who cannot change the station, who cannot listen
to their mother yell in the background, who cannot be playing Nintendo, who cannot have their headsets on." -- Joel
Babbit, former company president, on the advantages of Channel One for advertisers.
"If you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to come. Companies are saying, 'Hey, I want to
own the kid younger and younger.'" -- Mike Searles, former president of Kids-R-Us, a major children's clothing store, on
the business of marketing to kids.
"Because physical education is required for high school students, over 70 percent of students see GymBoards every
week." -- promotional material of YouthStream Media Networks, makers of school locker-room advertising boards.
"Teens will get your message when they see your logo within the materials. . . . Depending upon your product,
sampling and couponing can often be incorporated into the program. . . . In addition, we are able to gather demographic
information about the school and market." -- promotional material of West Glen, a company that distributes corporatesponsored "teaching" materials to schools.
And how a few adults are coming to their senses:
California has passed a law prohibiting schools from selling exclusive vending rights to soft-drink manufacturers unless
public hearings are held first. Another recently-passed law prohibits the use of product placements in school textbooks.
A third bill in the works would place limits on electronic advertising in schools.
Rep. George Miller has introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives that would prohibit companies like ZapMe!
Corp. from collecting marketing information in schools without written permission from parents.
In Canada, the provinces of New Brunswick and Manitoba have declared that the Youth News Network, a Canadian
version of Channel One, will not be allowed in public school classrooms.
So, maybe you don't like the idea of school becoming one giant rat maze for
the marketing lab. But what will you do about it? You could fight fire with fire,
using the laser printer supplied by ZapMe! corp. to print commercial-free
school stickers and posters, and jam every company logo in the school.
Unfortunately, the see-one-sticker-one approach may land you in the
principal's office. But there are other ways.
Start by figuring out the chain of command -- teacher, principal, school board
officials, state and federal education department officials, and so on. Then
complain as far up the ladder as you need to go until you get results. Contact
the news media. If you call the local newspaper and tell them you are being
forced to watch TV commercials during school, for instance, you'll get
attention fast. Jamming meetings, protesting outside schools, hanging
banners from classroom windows -- it's at least as much fun as doing
homework, and you'll probably learn more.
-- Article by Allan Casey, published in Adbusters magazine (Winter 2000,