I think the way we talk to our students and our teachers about marketing and the media has changed a bit. The consumption of media has changed. It's been put more squarely in the hands of the viewer, more so than ever before.
Commercials
When I teach kids about commercials, some kids look at me like I'm some square that carries a flip phone. Actually, most of them don't know what a flip phone is, so I'm some kind of square that checks his twitter using the web interface. What a nerd. Bottom line: my kids rarely, if ever, watch commercials. The business teacher at my school did a Super Bowl ad watch and subsequent hashtag to get kids to interact a little more with the media. The following Monday, he reviewed the ads and the conversation. Many of the kids had no reference point for the ads and had a hard time talking about approaches of the advertisers.
Why is this?
I try to suspend my understanding of commercials. How would I understand commercials if I were a a student? Here's what I'm thinking:
1) I don't consume television live unless it's a sporting event. Where are the ads? The ads pop up during breaks in game play with the announcer generally speaking over them. Most fields or ice have ads that might not have noise, but provides an almost subliminal message. I honestly don't believe kids consume these ads. The players are ads. LeBron, Kobe, and DRose are billboards. Beats headphones, Nike shoes-Adidas, Gatorade-Powerade. Are kids buying these things because of the attachment here? The amount of money dumped into these players to advertise these products makes it seem like it.
2) When I watch content on YouTube or top plays on the ESPN app, many of the videos start with ads that cannot be bypassed. Of all of the ads that I've seen, I think I am desensitized to it - I couldn't tell you one that I've seen. I wonder if the kids are the same.
3) Twitter has "Promoted by" tweets that are ads that pop up in feeds. I generally scroll by these.
4) The apps I use - primarily games that are free like Madden Mobile or Trivia Crack - ads pop up ALL the time. For me, I've tuned them out as annoying as they are. Have the kids?
5) Go to the kids - Kids are using Snapchat, so let's go there. More and more companies are moving there - even Rand Paul has joined. This is just one thing in a long line social media "stuff" trying to reach these new audiences. I wonder how companies used Facebook in 2007 vs today. Most of my students don't use Facebook much anymore. My mom does.
6) I generally find out about products and services from people I follow on Twitter. I wonder how kids do it?
I think what I need to do is a survey with the kids to see how they get information about products or services. Also, I should find ways to get them to tell me about how they are taught about social issues or how they see the world.
Very interesting perspective, Eric. Two things stood out for me: the general vibe that students aren't exposed to media as much (in this case, commercials) and the fact that when asked to discuss media via commercials they couldn't do it. Based on this, do you think we should be teaching students about media literacy or not? Surely they are exposed to media outside of only commercials...
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting. A lot of kids referenced billboards, games on their phone, and the internet when asked about where they see ads, BUT could explain recent television ads when prompted. I also found that most students do not consume television live except for sporting events (a small % of students do this even) yet still see (in some cases) 1000s of TV ads a month. It's just a weird outcome.
ReplyDeleteBased on the answers though, I find that most kids treat video ads as minor nuisances. "Annoying" popped up in answers numerous times and despite being able to describe a commercial, the students didn't know what it was the ad was trying to say. This is probably why my approach to teaching commercials is all wrong. I see them as ways for advertisers to sell us something that we have to be careful about and read into a little more closely, they see them as annoying little things that play before a YouTube clip they want to see or that pop up in a game they're playing. I'm looking at it from the "commercials cannot be skipped" and they are looking at it as "when can I click on SKIP to play the game."
My research primarily focused on second semester juniors and seniors, so who knows - maybe they are less impressionable by ads? Or, maybe I need to focus on the messages and credibility of the ads. They claim to never watch them, but is the message still getting through somehow?