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INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY
Contact: Leigh A. Poirier or
Janet Hetherington
613-228-3155
STUDY BY THE CANADIAN
TOY TESTING COUNCIL
CONFIRMS INFLUENCE OF TOY ADVERTISING ON CHILDREN
OTTAWA - November
14, 2001 - It's something parents have always suspected, but now it's
been confirmed: toy advertising to children, especially TV commercials,
has a direct influence on child viewers and can create a desire for "hot"
toys. In addition, children aged 4-6 years may be unable to make a clear
distinction between television programs and ads selling toys to them.
The Canadian Toy Testing
Council (CTTC), the leading authority on toys in Canada, completed a comprehensive
study of toy advertising to children through various media, and has released
the results in a document called "I Want That!: The impact of
current trends and practices shaping the advertising of toys to children
in the global marketplace." This special Media Study Project
was undertaken with the support of Industry Canada.
"The Canadian
Toy Testing Council undertook this study because we were receiving concerned
calls from parents, professionals and other Canadian consumers,"
said Leigh Poirier, CTTC Executive Director. "In recent years, marketing
and advertising strategies to promote such toys as Tickle Me Elmo, and
more recently, Pokemon, tended to create an unrealistic consumer demand.
In some cases, during the 'mad dash' for the 'have-to-have' toy, consumers
were actually physically injured. Numerous consumer and media inquiries
about these much sought-after toys created a consumer frenzy, with some
people wanting them without even really knowing what they are," she
said.
Prompted by concerned
calls, the Canadian Toy Testing Council decided to examine how well advertisers
are following advertising and broadcasting codes when advertising toys
to children. While the majority of the CTTC study focused on television
advertising, the study also touched upon print advertising and Internet
advertising. The complete results of this study are available via the
Internet at www.toy-testing.org.
According to Statistics
Canada, Canadian kids watch, on average, 16.8 hours of television a week
(Variety magazine, January 3, 1999). In 1998, 51 toy lines connected to
TV shows were launched worldwide, contributing to the $22 billion toy
licensing business (A.C. Nielsen Media Research and the Toronto Star;
March 17, 1999).
For the Media Monitoring
segment of the CTTC study, 19 of the Council's specially trained volunteer
families viewed over 70 television commercials advertising toys during
the pre- and post-Christmas buying season (November 2000-February 2001),
to see if the commercials conformed with The Broadcast Code for Advertising
to Children (1993).
Under the Code, "Children's
advertising" refers to paid commercial messages directed to persons
under 12 years of age. The code contains 30 guidelines. Key commitments
include:
- No subliminal messages,
i.e. messages below the threshold of normal awareness.
- No exaggeration
of product characteristics such as performance, speed, size, etc.
- Results from a
drawing, construction, craft or modelling toy or kit should be attainable
by an average child.
- No advertising
or child-oriented promotion of products not intended for use by children,
e.g. drugs, medicines in pharmaceutical form, etc.
- No advertising
which directly urges children to buy or ask their parents to buy a product
or service.
- A ban on the use
of puppets, persons and characters (including cartoon characters) well-known
to children, to endorse or promote products, premiums or services.
- Prices must be
clear and complete. If accessories seeming to be part of the purchase
are available only at extra cost, this must be clearly said and shown.
If toys shown together are sold separately, this must be made clear.
- No advertising,
except specific safety messages, can portray adults or children in clearly
unsafe acts or situations (e.g. using flames or fire, or tossing food
into the air and attempting to catch it in the mouth, etc.).
- Advertising cannot
imply that owning or using a product makes the owner superior or that
without it the child will be open to ridicule or contempt, except in
references to educational or health benefits.
Advertising to children in Quebec is prohibited by the Quebec Consumer
Protection Act.
Participants in the
study were encouraged to comment on the commercials and how their children
reacted to them. Observations included:
- I found a lot
of the "male" oriented toys were almost always violent in
some manner or another. It seemed that the world needed to be saved
and there were bad guys that needed to be conquered. The boys on the
commercial were shown shooting at the enemy or hitting someone or wrestling.
I did not see the same type of behaviour on any of the "girl"
toys. That is another point, there seemed to be a large gender barrier
between many of the toys, a clear idea of boy toys and girl toys. When
it came to commercials for cereals, they were not gender biased.
- I found that in
the 6 a.m.- 9 a.m. schedule, 90 percent of the commercials repeated
themselves every hour. If you had six commercials in one hour, at least
five of the same products would be repeated in the next hour. These
commercials would also repeat themselves in almost the same manner during
the week..
- Many stations show
the same commercial close together, but in different half-hour blocks
(e.g., 7:28 and 7:35). I guess they can get around the rules this way,
but kids still see the same commercial over and over again, close together.
- All the commercials
seemed to be aimed at kids!
- Most of the commercials
had website addresses written at the end of the commercial. (Parents
noted that many of the children viewing the commercials could not read,
and that many of the commercials did not tell children to ask permission
to visit the website.)
The CTTC study found
a number of traditional games were advertised in addition to the video
and computer games, and electronic toys. One manufacturer in particular
strongly promoted the notion of "family game night", where Mom,
Dad and the kids can all be together and play board games, perhaps in
an attempt to wrestle children away from the computer screen.
The TV commercials
attempted to make playing these games exciting, especially games for younger
kids. That excitement could be exaggerated at times, when it came to portraying
game play. Viewers also felt several computer game commercials viewed
tended to exaggerate the toy's capabilities. The use of animation - sophisticated
computer animation in particular - made it very easy for the ads to make
the characters look larger than will appear on the actual computer screen.
The Focus Group segment
of the CTTC study, conducted by Vision Research, explored the ability
of children of different ages to identify, comprehend and evaluate advertising
for toys and games.
Three groups of six to nine children were held during the winter of 2000
and spring of 2001. Participants were grouped by age to avoid opinion-leading
by older children. Key findings of the focus group sessions follow:
- According to the
children in these three focus groups, television was their most important
source of information about toys and games. The influence of television
diminished in older children who were more likely to be sceptical about
advertising and to be influenced by their peer group as well as television
advertising.
- While the participants
had difficulty recalling any advertisements for toys or games, when
shown a reel of recently-aired toy and game commercials, most had seen
the ads previously.
- The intent of television
commercials - to convince and sell - was evident to the 10-12 year olds
but totally transparent to the 4-6 year olds. The youngest children
did not appear to make a clear distinction between the program and the
commercials in a broadcast, even though they understood the content
of the programs and the ads.
- While the 4-6 year
olds were very open to influence by television advertising for toys,
this was less true for the two older age groups. Among the 7-9 year
olds there was more awareness of the sales intent of advertising, but
still developing tastes and brand loyalties.
- The use of older
children in commercials than would normally play with a certain toy
gave a commercial the air of an "endorsement" by older, and
presumably "cooler" children.
- Several examples
of commercials were presented which bordered on factual misrepresentation.
Where these commercials involved the functioning of a toy even the oldest
children were unable to evaluate the likelihood that a toy would function
as shown.
- Commercials demonstrating
inappropriate social behaviour were shown, but prompted little reaction.
The younger children with still-strong views of right and wrong were
more likely than the older ones to criticize a commercial because the
subject was "acting wild" or using a toy to steal from others.
- When the older
children were given the task of creating their own television commercials,
their lack of appraisal skills was demonstrated. Although they were
very familiar with many commercials, and could understand and "play
back" the communication elements of commercials, they were not
able to abstract from the ads or see the techniques of persuasion being
used.
- Among the older
children there was some awareness that important information might be
communicated in the "fine print" at the end of the commercial.
The most commonly recalled caveat was "Batteries not included,"
many other important conditional statements were not understood by the
children due to delivery that was too fast, print that was too small
and too difficult for children, and use of intonation that masked the
true meaning of the message.
- These three focus
groups with a range of children confirmed several hypotheses about the
influence of advertising on children. First, that pre-schoolers and
those in the early grades are impressionable and can be heavily impacted
by television advertising. Second, that "consumer caution"
messages are largely ineffective in communicating to the target audience
of children. And finally, that although children become aware of the
underlying sales motivation of television ads as they grow older, many
are not aware of how they might be misled.
The Canadian Toy Testing
Council, a non-profit organization that tests toys and provides the results
to Canadian families, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in
2002. The Council tests and rates toys for durability, safety, design,
function, ease of assembly, battery consumption and overall play value.
Toy experts will be
available for interviews by telephone to discuss the results of this study.
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