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New Trends in TV Marketing—Health Implications by Marcia Forbes (Media Consultant and former General Manager, Television Jamaica)
The television industry is an odd creature, constantly growing and creating new parts. And if that weren't enough to contend with, it is a creature strangely situated between two sometimes diametrically opposed forms of domination and control--the market and the state. The market—driven mainly by profit imperatives and market demands –walks the line drawn by the state whereby television, at least perhaps the main part of this creature, is required to ‘serve the public's interest'. Its diverse nature promises that when one is asked to talk about new trends in television marketing and the health implications of these trends, one has virtual blue skies. The talk would go in any of several directions. So let's focus. This presentation will examine the issues from the perspective of trends which impact children in general and adolescents in particular. It will restrict the definition of television to free-to-air and cable TV. A great deal must be left out but a great deal will be included.
Let me touch a little bit on what I will not be doing. I will not spend time giving you the latest marketing jargons, like the guerilla marketing we've seen demonstrated by Digicel and Cable & Wireless, our regional telecommunications Giants, with regard to West Indies Cricket and how this trend has impacted the health of an entire region, grown men and all; with television in full complicity. Neither will I detain you with the viral marketing approach increasingly popular via the internet, but also used by regular TV where it's called ‘leveraging the media'. Instead I want you to follow me into familiar territory, plain old advertising, a territory which is increasingly being insidiously invaded by new media technologies which put pressure on the market imperative for television entities, both broadcast and cable TV, to meet the ‘bottom line'.
Why do advertisers work so hard to tap into the children market? Is it because children tend to watch a great deal of television? The March 2005 Kaiser report puts total television watching at almost 4 hours per day for American children between 8 to 18 years of age. There are health implications related to this large amount of time spend in front of the TV and the associated relative inactivity, but ‘couch potatoes' will not be the focus of this presentation. In 2001 Victor Strasburger, media researcher/writer, in an article titled “Children and TV Advertising: Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide” notes that the average American child watches as many as forty thousand (40,000) television commercials every year. For the Australian child it's about a half of this. I do not agree with Strasburger that there is nowhere to run or to hide. If we use Sweden as just one example, we note that since 1991 that country has banned all advertising during
children's prime time TV. In fact the European Union is considering a ban on such advertising throughout the Union . That's a community with population of approximately four hundred and seventy million (470M). So clearly what obtains in the United States of America does not have to be the norm, but I understand Strasburger's sentiment and
sense of frustration. Advertisers really love ‘eyes and ears' and children's voracious appetite for TV gives them just that, lots and lots of little eyes and ears; Even if they don't always fully understand what it is that they are seeing and hearing!!
In addition to watching TV, children influence the household spend both directly and indirectly. Many children also spend their own money. Advertisers know this. They know that the household spend runs well over six hundred billion dollars ($600B) in the United States and that children 12 to 19 years old spend over $100 billion dollars per year of their own money. Because they know these statistics and a great deal more, US advertisers are willing to spend over twelve billion dollars ($12 B) annually to target juvenile consumers. The advertising spend in Europe is equally noteworthy. It is a great pity that these kinds of detailed figures, with a reasonable degree of veracity, are not available for the Caribbean region. During my six years at the helm of Television Jamaica , I frequently encountered industry figures for advertising revenues which, to the very best of my knowledge, bore little relationship to the reality. Trying to get a breakout of the percentage of ad spend directed at children is well nigh impossible. I quote you the US figures to emphasize the point that advertising to children is major time big business. Until the optimism being expressed in some quarters about reduced dependence on advertising revenues and a more diversified revenue base driven by technological advancement materializes, it is clear that television worldwide, unless state supported, depends primarily on advertising for its revenues.
For many advertisers children are fair game and they are hunting them mercilessly. Aware that this position is under siege, the Alliance for American Advertising, a group which lobbies for the right to advertise to children, was recently joined by the five hundred billion dollar food industry with companies such as Kellogg, Kraft Foods and General Mills. These are the top three advertisers to children. They are not taking what they see as interference in the way they do business lying down. This, regardless of whether or not their advertising is linked to abnormally high rates of childhood obesity with attendant risks of diabetes and early onset of high blood-pressure. Over in Europe broadcasters argue that the approximately one billion euros worth of annual revenues generated by TV for advertising children's products are needed to help create quality children's programmes. Satellite technology, the internet and the dominance of American television programmes and full channels in markets around the world make television advertising to children very difficult to control. But why worry? What's really wrong with children being exposed to the majority of these ads? After all, fast food companies have been cleaning up their act. McDonald's has dropped its supersize, Wendy's offers green salads and baked potatoes, so what's all the quarrel about?
Having been monitoring television for the past twenty (20) years, certain advertising trends are, as you say in Barbados , ‘pellucidly clear' to me. These trends are new, not because these things never happened before, but rather because of the extent to which they are now far more aggressive and focused on the youth market. They run deeper and wider than ever before. They have become the standard, the norm, not the exception and include:--
I want to further examine how this increasingly prevalent trend of using sex to promote products can affect the health of children by focusing specifically on music videos. These 3 to 5 minute mini-movies were originally designed to promote artistes and their songs. Over the past two decades with the birth of MTV they have evolved into much more than that and are now used by advertisers and manufacturers to promote a wide variety of products from Monolo Blanik shoes and its G Force male equivalent, to Moet and Alize. But more than anything else, music videos promote SEX. Last year a European Union funded project administered by UWI HARP (UWI HIV/AIDS Response Programme) and supervised by CARIMAC allowed me to spend a great deal of time talking to adolescents about their relationship with music videos. Subsequent to that study, since this is the topic of my PhD thesis work, I have been doing extensive reading and having discussions around the subject. I want to share some of the findings which make me most concerned.
Music Videos are extremely popular. MTV and BET reach 79 million and 72 million US households respectively. MTV's website describes the channel as the world's most-watched television network, reaching 384 million households across the globe. In Jamaica BET is the most watched cable channel among adolescents. But it's not just adolescents who watch music videos; children of all age ranges watch and love them. In Jamaica , and I suspect in many other Caribbean countries, music videos are shown right throughout the day either via cable or free-to-air TV. Yet this highly popular programme genre from as far back as 1998 was indicted by the American Academy of Pediatrics as unfit for children and dangerous to their health. Why have the children doctors come out so forcibly against music videos when so many of their patients love them? It has to do with the values, attitudes and behaviours which many of these videos portray, combined with the fact that many of the children who watch them are not developmentally prepared to handle some of the content to which they are exposed in these videos.
Researchers consistently mention the high incidence of sexual portrays in music videos, with most types of videos implicated in this. Rap, hip-hop, rock, pop, country and western and dancehall are all guilty of portraying fairly heavy doses of sex in their music videos. Research findings have shown that as much as 75% of concept music videos (those with a story line) contain sexual images. A 1995 research report out of John Hopkins noted that only about 1% of sexual messages viewed will discuss contraception or safe sex. Let me tell you what some of the adolescents in my study had to say about sex in music videos.
“Well you see because most of the videos giving the sex appeal thing, it's making most of us going and thinking that sex is alright but what they doing is having unprotected sex and therefore they can get AIDS.”
“Because the videos influence the man and the man now will say, ‘She talking about do it to me baby' and he's talking about sex, so have sex.” Girl in to 10 to 12 years age range living in inner-city Kingston
“In terms of the sex part the girls get more active nowadays because of the music videos.” Rural, lower income Boy in the 16 to 19 years age range
“Well, it seem like every music video startin' to depict sex, you rarely see anything that don't turn sex in it.” Rural, lower income Boy in the 16 to 19 years age range
“Some of the dancehall videos they sorta advocate the sexual abuse of women. I don't think it's nice. They never uplift women.” Urban, middle income Girl in the in the 16 to 19 years age range
“Instead of having the men around the women, they are making the women go with women in some of these videos which is promoting the gay thing. In like a lot of the videos you see the women rubbing up with the women and dancing.” Urban, middle income Girl in the in the 16 to 19 years age range
What do these statements tell us? The adolescents believe that music videos give them the OK to have sex, after all everybody they see in these videos are ‘doing it', furthermore the videos encourage unprotected sex since as one girls pointed out, you hardly ever hear a video talking about use a condom. Interestingly, even the young ones in the 10 to 12 years age range mentioned the ways in which music videos are beginning to promote homosexuality. We hear girls blaming the way men behave on what they see and hear in the music videos. And we hear boys blaming the increased sexual activity among girls as a consequence of what these girls see portrayed in the videos. One really bright and eloquent older adolescent boy told me that in his attempts to court a girl he presented himself as someone very driven. Her response was that rather than a man who is ‘driven', she prefers a man who drives. So a hard working man is no longer an attractive option, rather it's men like those in the videos that girls aspire to catch; The ones with the fancy, fast cars, the bling and the ‘bitches'—that's how women are referred to in many of the rap/hip-hop songs.
Yet despite all the criticisms adolescents across the social and gender divide heaped on music videos, across the board they love them. They feel music videos are for young people and adults just don't get it. “It's a bunch of noise to them”, “They show resentment toward these videos because I guess it's the era in which they grew up…so they not used to it. So it seems foreign to them. For example this forwardness with sex.” When asked to use one word to describe how they feel about music videos, the vast majority of responses were positive. Eighty three (83) positive responses were expressed, compared to only 12 negative ones. Music videos made them feel good and were entertaining and exciting. Middle class girls were the ones most offended by these videos and expressed most of the negative comments, using words such as anger, disgust and confusion to describe how music videos made them feel. Other questions brought out ways in which adolescents use music videos to learn how to ‘hug and kiss a girl' as one boy said, what types of fashions to wear, how to dance and generally how to behave toward the opposite sex.
Although this is being increasingly challenged, adolescence is generally accepted as a time of ‘storm and stress'. The bio-psycho-social changes which take place during this period of live can leave adolescents confused and searching. Many of them turn to the popular culture of music videos to answer some of their questions like, “Who am I”, “Should I have a boyfriend/girlfriend?”, “How should I behave toward this person? “What are the things I should aspire for in life”, “What types of behaviours are accepted by society.” If they use what they see in most music videos to answer these questions, they along with the rest of us are in for problems. As I said earlier, research has shown that 75% of concept videos contain sexual content. But what do these images usually depict? Certain genres of music such as rap/hip hop are often criticized for mainstreaming the pimp culture and primarily portraying black women as ‘hoes'. It is established that these are the kinds of videos which are regularly aired by BET. Using Jamaican adolescents as a case in point where BET is very popular, we have young men exposed to messages which tell them it's normal and honourable to pimp their way to success and young girls believing that transactional sex is an acceptable way to live. Your body is your most marketable commodity and you sell it to the highest bidder. The further impacts of these messages on young people have helped to push the rate of growth of HIV/AIDS as fastest growing among young women.
In Jamaica adolescent girls are three (3) times more likely than the boys to contract AIDS and teenage pregnancy is stuck at almost 20%, the highest in the region. The milk has already been spilt, crying about it doesn't help so what's to be done? It is time for us in the Caribbean to think seriously about measures which will reduce the risks which these new trends in television advertising, and I include music videos in this, pose to our children. I am the very last person to suggest censorship or bans by Government. In any case most times bans and censorship simply serve to drive the problem underground and create new money making opportunities for unscrupulous persons. Look at prohibition!! Additionally, media operates within the wider social context and is not necessarily sufficient to cause anti-social behaviour. In view of this, heavy regulation of media can be pointless since there are so many other sources of sexual messages within society. Having established that, however, the media can and should play its part.
It is time for the television industry to step up to the plate and take responsibility for its actions. Impose its own standards and stick to them. Let me give you one example, as head of a TV station in Jamaica a certain ad agency booked a commercial which they insisted had to be shown in prime time news. Both myself as General Manager and the Programmes Manager decided the ad was too risqué for that time of day since it had obviously undesirable sexual innuendos in both words and images which would have been pretty easy for children to understand. So we informed the agency the ad would be aired after the 9pm watershed. In my absence the agency protested and threatened to pull some of its revenue, the station, with sanction from the MD, acquiesced and the ad got its prime time news performance. By the time I returned the deed was done. A few months ago, since leaving the station, I saw the agency person. We got into a discussion about the matter. She laughed heartily and told me the station had no ‘cajones' because had it stood its ground the agency would simply have run the ad at the time dictated. After all the station was way ahead of its closest competitor at the time. She's a forthright kind of person so I believe her. Furthermore she was so keen to help me in my studies in whatever way she could that I sensed she felt badly about the incident. Why do so many marketing managers and people in the television industry believe that the client always holds the handle when they negotiate? Why are they so afraid to stand up for certain principles? In three words—The Almighty Dollar!!
It's time for television in our region to consider joining forces with the advertisers and the clients to clear up their act with respect to the kinds of advertisements which are produced and aired. I repeat that Governments should not be allowed to have to do this. Our industry should be mature enough and conscious enough to take this on. The wonton selling of sex and the shameless targeting of our children with messages which contribute to their ill health, physically and emotionally, should not be the kind of legacy this generation of Caribbean media practioners should be proud to leave. Coupled with this awakening of consciousness, broadcasters and narrowcasters, like cable operators, need to begin to recognize the importance of media literacy. In this time of ‘media plenty' and reduced ability to monitor what children see and hear on television, we can't pretend that they will not be exposed to certain kinds of content which may be deleterious to their health. Providing them with tools to better understand and interpret what they see will help them to make more informed assessments of this content. Media literacy puts children in a stronger position to negotiate their way through television content which is often laden with layers and layers of meanings, and none moreso than those in advertisements and music videos. So there's hope, there are solutions. Let's not wait on Broadcasting Commissions to force feed us into them.
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