Level: Grades 5 to 7
Overview
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To familiarize students with the marketing techniques used in television and magazine snack food ads. Learning Outcomes
Students demonstrate:
- an awareness of the different techniques applied in selling snack foods
- a beginning awareness of the format and structure of advertisements
- an understanding of their own reactions, as consumers, to these ads
Preparation and Materials
- Each student is to select and bring in 3 or 4 food advertisements from magazines.
- Prior to class, photocopy and distribute 3 copies of the handout: My Food Commercial Log to each of your students. Using these sheets, students are to identify their three favorite food ads on TV. They are only to answer the first two sections of their logs: the written description of the products that are being advertised, and the step-by-step outline of what happens in each commercial. Explain that the Advertising Strategies section will be completed in class.
- For class, photocopy student handouts You've Gotta Have a Gimmick! , Rules For Advertising To Kids and Food Advertising Strategies.
- A video camera (optional).
- An excellent introduction to this unit is the video Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising. (Check for it at your school board's media center.)
The Lesson
Guided Discussion
Begin by asking your students:
What is advertising? Why do manufacturers put large amounts of money into it?
Why is there advertising in TV programs, magazines and newspapers? (To pay for TV programming and magazine and newspaper publications and distribution.)
How many different types of advertising can you think of? (i.e., television, magazines, bill boards, sponsorships, radio, licensing of logos.)
Discuss how advertising is BIG business, that often, the advertisements that kids see on TV cost more to produce than the shows that they are watching. For example, the cost of advertising during the 2000 Superbowl was $73,333 a second! Advertisers spend a lot of time and money creating profiles of the people who they want to sell their products to (the target audience). They also research and test different methods to sell their products to consumers.
Distribute and discuss the three handouts.
You've Gotta Have a Gimmick! deals with the fairly straightforward marketing techniques of premiums, sweepstakes, and kids clubs. Have the students discuss their own experiences with these gimmicks:
- What products were they featured with?
- How satisfied were they with their experiences?
- Did these activities encourage them to buy a certain product?
Regarding kids clubs, ask if any students ever joined clubs on commercial Web sites for kids.
What did they have to do to join? (What information did they have to submit? Were their parents involved?)
- What did they get for joining?
- Did they enjoy their experience?
- How is the Internet a boon to marketers when it comes to gimmicks such as sweepstakes and kids clubs? (The Internet provides easy and immediate access to promotions like these. A child who may be unlikely to mail in an application to a club can join at the click of a mouse online.)
Rules For Advertising To Kids outlines the rules that manufacturers must follow when advertising to children.
- Ask students if they can think of examples of advertisements that don't follow these rules. As these are Canadian guidelines, they may have seen advertisements on American channels that break the rules.
Food Advertising Strategies looks at the more devious side of advertising, sometimes called 'hidden persuaders' - the selling of lifestyles or images as a way to convince consumers to buy products.
- Ask students about their favorite commercials. What is it that they like best about them? What makes a good commercial?
Review the techniques on the Food Advertising Strategies handout with students to make certain they understand the concepts.
- How are these strategies related to the advertising rules that we have just discussed? (Even though they might be interpreted as being sneaky, they fit within the guidelines. Kids have to be on their guard, even when advertisers are playing within the rules!)
Activity 1
Ask students to refer to the My Food Commercial Log handouts that were partially completed prior to the lesson. As a class, brainstorm the strategies that have been used in a few of these advertisements (use the techniques in the other handouts as a reference). Have each student choose one or two of the commercials that they have described and complete the third section of their logs by identifying the food advertising strategies used to sell the product, why they think each strategy was used, and how successful they think the strategy has been in this particular ad. (To be handed in.)
Divide the class into groups. Have students within each group identify the strategies used in the magazine advertisements that they have brought in and discuss their reactions to each of these ads.
Activity 2
Each group is now an advertising agency. They have been hired to create a commercial for a new food product. (Students can be as creative as they want regarding their new snack, but it must be edible!) They must decide:
- What food product are they selling?
- Who are they selling their product to? (Target Market)
- What advertising strategy(s) will they be using, keeping in mind their Target Market.
Above all, they must remember that they want to convince their customers to buy their product.
Each group will produce:
1. A product profile, identifying the food product to be sold, the target market and advertising strategies.
2. A script for their commercial.
3. The commercial itself.
Each group will perform or screen their videotaped commercial for the class. Members of the audience try to identify the strategies that are used to sell the product.
Evaluation:
- Completed food commercial logs
- Group productions of food commercials
