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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.



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



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



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



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 .




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




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.




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




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



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.




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




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



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




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




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




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




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



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



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-




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




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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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

everything is all right

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