Thursday, 14 January 2016

Evaluation

This module has been vital to my learning process of more specific elements of graphic design. Previously, I had little knowledge on how important it is in marketing products to children.

Through constructing my essay, I have researched many different sources that thoroughly investigate branding theory, communication theory and colour theory. However, I think that I struggled with pulling together studies on how children perceive colour, as it has been difficult to find legitimate data. If the data I used to support my argument was my own primary research, then it possibly could have made my argument stronger and I could have analysed my findings to a better standard. However, I don't know many children at all, so this wasn't something I could have done properly anyway.

If I had given myself more time for researching outside of books, I would have contacted design studios that cater towards design for children: I did consider this, but only when it was getting a little late for that kind of research. I also thought that asking questions around the subject of manipulation in packaging for children may elicit some ungenuine responses, or very biased opinions.

In my dissertation I struggled with critical analysis, but through my writing I definitely gained a confidence in it. If I had seeked some help on this area it may have improved my writing significantly.

To coincide with my essay, after some thought I decided to create a testing of an idea. I think that this would have been a lot more valuable if I had the opportunity to put it into practice, and study children through my outcome. It then would have been more of an appropriate exploration to discover the argument of my essay in real practical terms. Unfortunately, finding children for a study is very difficult, so I wasn't able to do this.

My time management has been up and down for this module: I didn't make a strict enough time plan In September and October, but when November came I set goals for myself which I mostly did reach. When I took time off for Christmas, I made sure that beforehand I had got enough done, so that in January I wasn't too rushed. The few days before the deadline, I was very rushed to get everything finished, which taught me to next time plan even better.

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

Research: Communication theory - books

How culture conditions the colours we see
Umberto Eco, 'The Communication Theory Reader' Edited by Paul Cobley
1996, Routledge, London

pg 159
Perception occupies a puzzling position, somewhere midway between semiotic categorization and discrimination based upon mere sensory processes.

pg 167
Human societies do not only speak of colours, but also with colours. We frequently use colours as semiotic devices: we communicate with flags, traffic lights, road signs, various kinds of emblems.

pg 169
The colours of national flags are not colours: physical pigments; they are expressions correlated to cultural units, and as such are strongly categorised.

pg 170
In everyday life, our reactivity to colour demonstrates a sort of inner and profound solidarity between semiotic systems. Just as language is determined by the way in which society sets up systems of values, things and ideas, so our chromatic perception is determined by language.


The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan
pg 26
All media work us over completely. They are so persuasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. 

Understanding Media
Marshall McLuhan

The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. If it is asked, "What is the content of speech?," it is necessary to say, "It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal." An abstract painting represents direct manifestation of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs.

-


Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler
Published by Routledge, 2001
Models of the Sign
pg 13
We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely homo significans - meaning-makers. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Indeed, according to Peirce, 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302). Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (ibid., 2.172). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of semiotics.

pg 17
Saussure stressed that sound and thought (or the signifier and the signified) were as inseperable as the two sides of a piece of paper (Saussure 1983, 111). They were 'intimately linked' in the mind 'by an associative link' - 'each triggers the other' (ibid., 66). Saussure presented these elements as wholly interdependent, neither pre-existing the other.

-

Visible Signs
by David Crow
AVA Publishing SA 2003, Switzerland

pg 24
on Charles Sanders Peirce theory -
Charles Sanders Peirce is the philosopher who is recognised as the founder of the American tradition of semiotics. Whereas Saussure was primarily interested in language, Peirce was more interested in how we make sense of the world around us.
[...] This is not merely the user of the sign but a mental concept of the sign which is based on the user's cultural experience of the sign. The interpretant is not fixed. It does not have a single definable meaning, but its meaning can vary depending on the reader of the sign. The emotional response to the word 'book' will vary depending on the reader's experience of books. [...]

pg 33
Peirce defined three categories of signs;
Icon - this resembles the sign. A photograph of someone could be described as an iconic sign in that it resembles physically the thing that is represents. [...]
Index - there is a direct link between the sign and the object. In this category smoke is an index of fire and a tail is an index of a dog. Traffic signs in the street are index signs as they have a direct link to the physical reality of where they are placed such as at a junction or at the brow of a hill.
Symbol - these signs have no logical connection between the sign and what it means. They rely excusively on the reader having learnt the connection between the sign and its meaning.

pg 34
Peirce also identified three levels of properties for signs which can be mapped on to his triangular model. He labelled these properties firstness, secondness, and thirdness.
Firstness - This is a sense of something. It could be described as a feeling or a mood.
Secondness - This is the level of fact. The physical relation of one thing to another.
Thirdness - You could think of this level as the mental level. It is the level of general rules which bring the other two together in a relationship. It relates the sign to the object as a convention.

pg 57
(Roland Barthes) Denotation - what is pictured
This first order of signification is straightforward. It refers to the physical reality of the object which is signified. [...]
Connotation - how it is pictured
[...] The reader is playing a part in this process by applying their knowledge of the systematic coding of the image. In doing this the meaning is affected by the background of the viewer. [...]
Connotation is arbitrary in that the meanings brought to the image at this stage are based on rules or conventions which the reader has learnt.

pg 58
Convention
This is an agreement about how we should respond to a sign. [...] So much of the meaning comes from convention that signs with little convention need to be very iconic in order to communicate to a wide audience.

Research: Branding and packaging for children

M&M's






http://www.mms.com/




Haribo










GoGo Squeez



Research: Packaging

PACKAGING 
Package Design Now! - Gisela Kozak, Julius Wiedemann






pg 21
This concept links HEALTHY products with healthy packaging and provides a tactile collectible toy for babies to play with while mum bathes them. The packaging reinforces the safe gentle qualities of the product inside.

pg 175
The product range consists of approximately 20 products, so clear product differentiation was needed to make the range easy for the customer to shop. Unlike most M&S products, there were no inherent food values to showcase - the proposition was one of fun, impromptu snacking. The range is mainly aimed at customers with young families, though there are older customers who buy the snacks for the nostalgia factor. One thing that separates these products from the rest of the savoury category is that their shapes are all individual. Therefore it was felt making the product hero and using bold metallic colours would give each pack a clear identity. The playful use of a verbal and visual pun brought a fun element to the packaging. Mandatory product copy appears in a simple coloured corner panel which is common to all packaging in this category. 
pg 291
Inspired by baby bottles, toys and teething rings, Tatil developed an ergonomic packaging line to offer comfort and fun to the kids. During and after its use, each packaging turned into a toy in order to stimulate imagination and games. This redesign included ring toss, soap bubbles, inflatable soap dishes, funny shaped sponges and lots of colours.
pg 362
This particular bottle idea was conceived as a way of engendering the dullness of kids' drinks packaging with the personality of animals. The form is both highly feasible and hugely characterful; a chameleon form capable of becoming a range of animal types through colour and decoration. The bottles will stack for both play at point-of-sale and, of course, at home. The design has been tooled and awaits a suitable license, but the Tin Horse Design Team was interested in a differentiated product.

Research: Colour - Journals, papers and studies

Color sells: How the psychology of color influences consumers
Sarah Tornetta, Tess Fox, Jordan Blackbird
http://udel.edu/~rworley/e412/Psyc_of_color_final_paper.pdf

Color sells products. It is a powerful marketing tool that significantly influences consumer purchases, so much so that it accounts for 85% of the reason why someone decides to purchase a product
(Hemphill 275). Marketers must understand the psychology of color in order to use it effectively.



It is necessary to define the three basic principles of color, hue, saturation, and value, to understand associative learning (see fig.1).
Hue is the wavelength of a color and determines its label, such as orange or green. Saturation is the intensity of a color, or, how pigmented a color is. Value is how bright a color is. Together, these three factors determine how people perceive color and thus the associations they form with it.

Implementing color associations in package designs

Marketers use color associations to increase product sales by sending a message to the consumer (see fig. 2). Crest 3D Whitestrips, for example, consists primarily of blue. Blue is associated with cleanliness, emphasizing the product’s promise of clean, white teeth. White’s association with purity makes it the ideal accent color.
Nature Valley Granola Bars are packaged in a green and yellow box. Green is associated with nature and the outdoors, which is appropriate for this product’s sales pitch of wholesome, all-natural, and healthy ingredients. Furthermore, it is the easiest color for the eyes to process. Yellow is associated with sunshine and optimism, promoting the product in a warm and positive manner.
Apple’s black iPhone box demonstrates the effective use of black in packaging. Although black is linked to death and evil in specific contexts, in this context it is associated with power and luxury. Apple’s products are expensive and the color black aids in selling the product as an exclusive, high-­‐quality item. Black is often the color of choice for electronics and other luxury items.

Establishing brand recognition with color
Brand recognition is the consumer’s ability to identify or associate a product with a brand. Marketers establish brand recognition by using a specific formula of colors and shapes to form a brand mark. The key is consistency; the same colors must be present across all facets of a company. For example, acompany’s website should be visually relatable to its store and consumer products. Researchers at the University of Loyola found that color increases brand recognition by up to 80%. (Morton “Why Color Matters”). In another study, when a group of people were shown ‐second advertisements, over 62% developed an association to a brand based purely on the colors they saw (Chang and Lin 3345). Brand recognition has a large impacton consumer purchasing behavior. Aside from impulse shoppers, many shoppers seek out products of brands they recognize. Successful color manipulation enables shoppers to quickly and easily identify the brand they are looking for amongst a sea of similar products. Once a company succeeds at establishing brand recognition, it can temporarily manipulate trademark colors to add interest to a product. Heinz, which successfully established brand recognition by using the color red, introduced EZ Squirt Blastin’ Green ketchup in October 2000. This dramatic alteration from the familiar deep red ketchup bottles boosted product sales by $23 million. Consumers had developed such strong associations between Heinz and red ketchup bottles that the green bottles attracted attention and drew interest. This illustrates just how powerful colour can be.



Colour Preferences
http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/preferences.html




COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS study

http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/associations.html



Global Color Survey
http://www.colorcom.com/global-color-survey

Thanks for taking the Global Color Survey.
Over 200,00 people from all points on the globe have taken the survey. Here are the results:
Happy - Yellow
Pure - White
Good Luck - Green
Good-tasting - Red (tomato)
Dignity - Dark Blue
High Technology - Silver
Sexiness - Red (tomato)
Mourning - Black
Expensive - Gold
Inexpensive - Brown
Powerful - Red (tomato)
Dependable - Blue
High Quality - Gold
Nausea - Muted Yellow
Deity - White
Bad Luck - Black
Favorite Color - Blue
Least Favorite Color - Dark Yellow



The Button Test
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/20566/The-Button-Color-A-B-Test-Red-Beats-Green.aspx

Impact of Color on Marketing
Satyendra Singh (Department of Administrative Studies, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada)
(2006), Management Decision, Vol. 44 Iss: 6 pp. 783 - 789
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/00251740610673332

researchers found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be based on color alone (depending on the product).



Exciting Red and Competent Blue
Lauren I. Labrecque, George R. Milne
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, September 2012, Volume 40, Issue 5, pp 711-727
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11747-010-0245-y

Purchasing intent is greatly affected by colors due to the impact they have on how a brand is perceived. This means that colors influence how consumers view the "personality" of the brand in question.



Color Research and Application
Edited By: Ellen C. Carter
ISI Journal Citation Reports © Ranking: 2014: 85/135 (Engineering Chemical)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6378

Additional studies have revealed that our brains prefer recognizable brands, which makes color incredibly important when creating a brand identity. It has even been suggested in Color Research & Application that it is of paramount importance for new brands to specifically target logo colors that ensure differentiation from entrenched competitors (if the competition all uses blue, you'll stand out by using purple).

Visual and instrumental evaluation of orange juice color: A consumers's preference study
ROCÍO FERNÁNDEZ-VÁZQUEZ et al.
Journal of Sensory Studies

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2011.00360.x/abstract

When it comes to picking the “right” color, research has found that predicting consumer reaction to color appropriateness in relation to the product is far more important than the individual color itself.
 So, if Harley owners buy the product in order to feel rugged, you could assume that the pink + glitter edition wouldn't sell all that well.

The Isolation Effect in Free Recall and Recognition

Gerrit van Dam, Joan Peeck, Michèle Brinkerink and Usmar Gorter
The American Journal of Psychology

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1421391

The psychological principle known as the Isolation Effect states that an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" is more likely to be remembered. Research clearly shows that participants are able to recognize and recall an item far better (be it text or an image) when it blatantly sticks out from its surroundings.

Colours and Emotions: Preferences and Combinations
Mark Meerum Terwogt and Jan B. Hoeksma, The Journal of General psychology, 122(1), 5-17
http://irtel.uni-mannheim.de/lehre/expra/artikel/Terwogt_Hoeksma_1995.pdf

According to our hypothesis, highly preferred colours should be tied to highly preferred emotions, whereas non-preferred colours should be tired to non-preferred emotions. At the same time, a preferred colour is not likely to be tied to a non-preferred emotion or vice versa.

Research // Children: colours and emotions


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion


http://musingsofanaspie.com/tag/aspergers-tests/



Research: Branding - books


Corporate Identity
by Wally Olins
1989, Thames and Hudson, London
pg 7
The identity of the corporation must be so clear that it becomes the yardstick against which its products, behaviour and actions are measured.

This means that the identity cannot simply be a slogan, a collection of phrases: it must be visible, tangible and all-embracing.
In the sprawling, complex corporations with which this book is mostly concerned, where innumerable interests - each supported by individuals - conflict and compete for power and influence, the company's long-term purpose, its values, its identity must be managed consciously and clearly, or they will be overwhelmed and disregarded in sectional infighting. The organisation will simply become an inert victim of the various factions that seek to control it.

pg 9
Identity is expressed in the names, symbols, logos, colours and rites of passage which the organisation uses to distinguish itself, its brands and its constituent companies. At one level, these serve the same purpose as religious symbolism, chivalric heraldry or national flags and symbols: they encapsulate and make vivid a collective sense of belonging and purpose. At another level, they represent consistent standards of quality and therefore encourage consumer loyalty.

[This book] It also takes the view that the corporation is, whether it likes it or not, becoming more closely integrated into society, and that society is becoming increasingly judgmental about the behaviour and actions of corporations.We are entering an epoch in which only those corporations making highly competitive products will survive. This means, in the longer term, that products from the major competing companies around the world will become increasingly similar. Inevitably, this means that the whole of the company's personality, its identity, will become the most significant factor in making a choice between one company and its products and another.

pg 29
Corporate identity is concerned with four major areas of activity:
Products/services - what you make or sell
Environments - where you make or sell it - the place of physical context
Information - how you describe and publicize what you do
Behaviour - How people within the organization behave to each other and to outsiders
All of these communicate ideas about the company. But in fact the entire corporation communicates in everything it does all the time. The fact that the company exists at all is itself a form of communication. The potency of different forms of communication varies, however, together with the degree to which they are modulated.

pg 33
Because communication, more particularly advertising and packaging, gives life and personality to consumer products, advertising especially has become a prism through which many products that we use in everyday life - fizzy drinks, soaps, toothpaste, breakfast cereals - are projected. Almost inevitably, therefore, many people have come to associate advertising with identity, or with image.
This is a misleading and potentially dangerous idea, because it has the effect of devaluing the real power of product, environment and behaviour in the identity mix, at the risk of overvaluing information techniques.
Perhaps even more importantly though, the idea that identity is somehow inextricably associated with conventional communication techniques, and particularly with advertising, inevitably distorts the reality, which is that identity is usually a manifestation of what the organization is all about; and that in the end, identity is the responsibility of the people who run the organization and not only of its designers, public relations people or advertising agencies.

pg 35
Increasingly therefore, we, the public, are having to make a choice between one company, one product or one service and another on the basis of factors that are very difficult to quantify, such as reputation. It's certain that the companies with good products and powerful, well-coordinated identities, will beat their competitors whose products are just as good, but whose identities are weak.

pg 45
New techniques in information technology, market research and production are increasingly driving successful manufacturers into making products that are alike in all tangible and quantifiable characteristics - price, quality and service, and even to a certain extent appearance.

pg 56
One way or another, whether they are conscious of it or not, most commercial organizations use design to delineate their relationship with their customers.

pg 78
If a company has, say, five divisions and it uses one name, one set of colours, one symbol and typestyle in all of them, it will convey a simple, centralized idea of itself. If the same company gives each division a seperate colour, it will inevitably project a more decentralized identity. And if it uses different names, symbols and logotypes for each division, it will give an even more disparate impression. The identity resource can clarify an organization's structure - and enable its purpose and its shape to emerge clearly.

pg 115
Once the idea of separate target audiences grew up, the permutations were endless. You could produce a whole range of products aimed at different groups; it didn't really matter if the intrinsic difference between the products was negligible, providing they all had individual names and packaging, and were promoted separately in ways appropriate to each target audience.

Branding soon became the magic ingredient that enabled companies to sell variations of a single product to the greatest possible variety of people.

Branding is one of the most powerful ways of promoting a product. The greatest single strength of the brand is that, because it is created carefully and deliberately to appeal to a particular group of people at a particular point in time, it can be imbued with powerful, complex, highly charged and immediate symbolism aimed at a specific marketplace.

Over the last generation the change that has been taking place in the retail stores in many countries has been revolutionary - almost as revolutionary as the growth of the manufacturer's brand itself at an earlier period. Where the branded products were king for over a century, while the retailer was for the most part supine, the monolithic identity has now been 'discovered' by the retailer. In a sense we could say that the retailer has found his strengths and suddenly emerged from nowhere to take a vast slice of the market. In certain countries and in some kinds of market, retailers with monolithic identities in environment (shops), information systems (packaging and advertising) and products are busily knocking the traditional branded manufacturers cock-eyed.


Understanding Brands
by Don Cowley
1991 by Kogan Page Limited

BRAND PACKAGING
pg 137
Ideally it should project a personality, instil loyalty, forge emotional links, and actively persuade people to ‘buy me’.

Packaging design has become ‘active’. An exciting new agenda has been set which combines the creative with the commercial, and explores the intuitive alongside the rational.

Pg 139
It must flag down the prospect in mass display; involve on an emotional level, strike a chord, touch a nerve; symbolise the brand’s core proposition and differentiate it from the competition; project the brand’s personality; persude and seduce; communicate information; provide a functional cover for the product in transit and in the home; and be ecologically friendly.

Brand packaging continues to work after purchase. […] We were brought up with the friendly faces of Kelloggs, Heinz, Cadbury’s, and Johnson’s Baby. They are part of life. But where it works hardest is at the point of sale, at the critical moment when the purchase decision is made.

The Corporate Brand 
by Nicholas Ind, 1997, Macmillan Press Ltd, Hampshire

CYNICISM OF CONSUMERS
pg 20
With consumer confidence also comes cynicism. Consumers do not necessarily believe what companies tell them about themselves or their products. The growing distrust of institutions and in particular central government is borne out of us knowing more than ever before about the realities of what goes on and the accumulated evidence of broken promises.

CHEAP ALTERNATIVES
Pg 23
If the consumer fails to perceive a relevant and distinctive appeal in a brand, then they will purchase a less expensive alternative.

They were certainly cheaper, but most were also poorer quality. This was reflected in the approach to packaging, which was minimalist and designed to emphasise the functionality and value of the product.

No Logo
Naomi Klein, 2005, Harper Perennial, London

BRAND NOT PRODUCT
Pg 4
These pioneers made the bold claim that producing goods was only an incidental part of their operations, and that thanks to recent victories in trade liberalisation and labor-law reform, they were able to have their products made for them by contractors, many of them overseas. What these companies produced primarily were not things, they said, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in manufacturing but in marketing. This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness: whoever owns the least, has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race.

Pg 5
Since many of today’s best-known manufacturers no longer produce products and advertise them, but rather buy products and “brand” them, these companies are forever on the prowl for creative new ways to build and strengthen their brand images.

COMPETITIVE BRANDING
Pg 6
What made early branding efforts different from more straightforward salesmanship was that the market was not being flooded with uniform mass-produced products that were virtually indistinguishable from one another.

The first task of branding was to bestow proper names on generic goods such as sugar, flour, soap and cereal, which had previously been scooped out of barrels by local shopkeepers.

ITS A CULTURE
Pg 30
It is not to sponsor culture but to be the culture. And why shouldn’t it be? If brands are not products but ideas, attitudes, values and experiences, why can’t they be culture too?

Research: Children and branding



http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/2763/

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-14-1274.pdf


10 Junk Food Marketing Tricks That Target Your Kids
http://www.mastersinhealthcare.com/blog/2011/10-junk-food-marketing-tricks-that-target-your-kids/





Little consumers have big impact on food packaging
By Jenni Spinner, 09-Dec-2013
http://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Technology/Packaging-Packing-Materials-Containers/Little-consumers-have-big-impact-on-food-packaging

"Effective packaging for kids must present the proper character, tone and story via visual messaging, to deliver on what we call the 5 E's: to engage, emote, entice, enhance and endure," he said. (Bill Goodwin)

McDonald's has a hold on preschoolers' taste buds
By Krista Conger, Stanford Report, August 8, 2007
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/august8/med-fastfood-080807.html

Asked to sample two identical foods from the fast-food giant McDonald's, children preferred the taste of the version branded with the restaurant's familiar "Golden Arches" to one extracted from unmarked paper packaging, say researchers at the School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
The study shows that even young children are swayed by brand preferences. The results are likely to fuel more debate over a growing movement to restrict marketing to kids under 8 years old.

The degree of preference expressed by the children correlated with the number of television sets they had in their homes and the frequency with which they ate at McDonald's.

Numerous studies have shown that young children are unable to understand that advertising, product placement and co-branding with popular toys are meant to get them to choose one product over another. For them, "truth in advertising" has a very literal meaning.

"It's really an unfair marketplace out there for young children," said Robinson, who is also a member of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. "It's very clear they cannot understand the persuasive nature of advertising."

The researchers studied the taste preferences of 63 children between the ages of 3 and 5 who were enrolled in six Head Start centers in San Mateo County.

Each food sample was divided into two identical portions, one placed in a McDonald's wrapper or in a McDonald's bag, and the other in similar wrapping without the McDonald's logo. The children were randomly asked to taste first one and then the other of the five identical, differently packaged, pairs of food samples and indicate whether they tasted the same or which they thought tasted better. With four out of the five foods—chicken nuggets, fries, carrots and milk—significantly more children pegged the McDonald's product as tastier, despite the fact that the foods were exactly the same

"The branding effect is very strong, even by only 3 to 5 years of age," said Robinson.
He and his colleagues also asked the children's parents to complete a questionnaire that asked, among other things, how many TVs they had in their house, how often they ate at McDonald's and whether they had any toys from McDonald's. The kids had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes, and more than half the kids had a TV in their bedrooms. About one-third of the children ate at McDonald's more than once a week, and more than three-quarters had McDonald's toys at home.
"We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald's more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald's wrapper," said Robinson. "This is a company that knows what they're doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children." McDonald's is estimated to spend more than $1 billion dollars per year on U.S. advertising.

Robinson was quick to point out that marketing is more than just television advertisements, and that it's not restricted to McDonald's. An older sibling's co-branded toy or a parent's hankering for an Ultimate Double Whopper can amount to an implicit nod of approval in the eyes of an impressionable toddler. And although the parents hold the keys to the car that goes to the fast-food restaurant, they're not entirely to blame.
"Parents don't choose for their children to be exposed to this type of marketing," he said. "Parents have a very difficult job. It may seem easier to give in to their child's plea to go to McDonald's than to give in to the many other hundreds of requests they get during a day."
The growing concern is not falling on deaf ears. Last December, possibly in response to threatened regulations and lawsuits, McDonald's and nine other top food companies announced the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. Participants agree to devote at least half their advertising messages to promoting healthier choices for children.



Eyes in the Aisles: Why Is Cap’n Crunch Looking Down at My Child?
Brian Wansink, John S. Dyson
http://eab.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/27/0013916514528793.abstract

Abstract
To what extent do cereal spokes-characters make eye contact with children versus adults, and does their eye contact influence choice? In study 1, the shelf placement and eye positioning of 86 cereal spokes-characters were evaluated in 10 grocery stores in the Eastern United States. We calculated the average height of cereal boxes on the shelf for adult- versus children-oriented cereals (48 in. vs. 23 in.) and the inflection angle of spokes-characters’ gaze (0.4° vs. −9.6°). We found that cereal characters on child- (adult-) oriented cereals make incidental eye contact at children’s (adults’) eye level. In Study 2, we showed that eye contact with cereal spokes-characters increased feelings of trust and connection to the brand, as well as choice of the brand over competitors. Currently, many of the cereals targeted toward children are of the heavily sugared, less healthy variety. One potential application of this finding would be to use eye contact with spokes-characters to promote healthy choices and healthier food consumption.

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Refunds issued: Kids' vitamins aren't as healthy as advertised
By Todd Sperry, CNN, 2012
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/14/health/childrens-vitamins-refund/

The marketer of a popular children's vitamin is refunding nearly $2.1 million to customers after acknowledging its pills contained only a fraction of a nutritional substance the packaging claimed.

The vitamins' packaging featured Disney princesses, Winnie the Pooh, Nemo and Spider-Man. ManufacturerNBTY and two of its subsidiaries, Rexall Sundown and NatureSmart, claimed in product advertising and on packaging that the vitamins contained a dose of DHA that would satisfy 100% of a child's daily requirement.

But in some cases the vitamins contained only minuscule amounts of DHA, the Federal Trade Commission said.



Kids pick healthy food with attractive packaging
2015
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/news/a25653/kids-pick-healthy-food-with-attractive-packaging/

While it's common for parents to encourage their children to eat healthily, a new study has revealed that primary school-aged children will reach for healthy food on their own accord, if it comes in attractive packaging.

Working in cooperation with the Research Institute for Child Nutrition in Dortmund, a team of scientists at the University of Bonn, Germany, set out to investigate the relationship between marketing techniques and children's eagerness to choose healthy foods.

For the study, they recruited 179 children from primary schools in Dortmund, aged between eight and ten.

The children were asked to choose between three identical yoghurt, fruit and cereal snacks - but the only thing that differed was the packaging designs. The first packaging design was plain, the second displayed additional health information, and the third packaging design displayed cartoon characters and an attractive product name.

To determine the participants' motivation to choose a particular snack, the researchers used a device that measured hand grip strength. This allowed them to discover the strength with which the children squeezed their hand in order to receive their desired muesli snack.

It was found that the participants' motivation was greatest for the snack with the cartoon character packaging design. The plain packaging and the packaging detailing health information were less favoured by the children.

Mathilde Kersting, lead researcher of the study, said: 'Attractively designed food packaging can tempt children to pick unhealthy foods.

'However, marketing effects of this type can also be used to promote healthy food products to children.'

The next step in the research is to determine how the appeal of school milk or wholegrain sandwiches can be increased.

The study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.


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Advertising to Children
by M. Carole Macklin and Les Carlson
1999 Sage Publications, California

[Through the Eyes of a Child: Children’s Knowledge and Understanding of Advertising – Deborah Roedder John]
pg 7
Although children can discriminate commercials from programs by the time they are five years old, as noted earlier, it takes a few more years before children expand their knowledge base to include an understanding of advertising’s persuasive intent. Prior to this, young children tend to view advertising as a form of entertainment (e.g., “commercials are funny”) or as a form of unbiased information (e.g., “commercials tell you about things you can buy”). Quite abruptly, around the age of 7 or 8 years, children begin to see the persuasive intent of commercials, coming to terms with the fact that advertisers are “trying to get people to buy something.”

Pg 10
Ward et al. (1977) (Children’s Reactions to Commercials – Journal of Advertising Research) report that the percentage of kindergartners, third graders, and sixth graders believing that advertising never or only sometimes tells the truth increases from 50% to 88% to 97%, respectively.

Bever et al. (1975)(Young Viewers’ Troubling Response to TV Ads – Harvard Business Review) report that most of the seven- to 10-year-olds in their study could not discriminate truthful from misleading advertising and admitted to their difficulties in evaluating advertising: “ ‘[Advertisers] can fake well,’ they said, and ‘you don’t really know what’s true until you’ve tried the product’"

Pg 14
Advertising knowledge of a more specific form, involving an understanding of what tactics and appeals are used by advertisers and why they are used, emerges much later in the developmental sequence as children approach early adolescence (11 to 14 years of age) (Boush, Friestad, and Rose 1994; Paget, Kritt, and Bergemann 1984). (Adolescent Skepticism Toward TV Advertising and Knowledge of Advertiser Tactics – Journal of Consumer Research)

Pg 19
Although eight- to 12-year-olds have a good deal of general knowledge about advertising, their ability to retrieve and use whatever knowledge they have acquired is still developing as cued processors.

[Youth, Advertising and Symbolic Meaning – Cindy Dell Clark]
pg 79
From Barbie’s to McDonald’s to Cheetos, products that succeed with children over time are rich reservoirs of meaning: that is, the product itself and its advertising symbols are meaningful and valued.

Pg 80
Children, from a very young age, are adept at imputing symbolic meanings. Even as babies, for example, tots use a possession such as a stuffed bear or blanket as a “transitional object” that comforts them in the absence of their mother (Winnicott 1971). The metaphorical comprehension involved in symbolism, experimental research shows, is an early emergent mental process (Goswami 1992; Marks, Hammeal, and Bornstein 1987; Winner 1988). Symbols encompass meaning at both the affective and the cognitive levels for children, as demonstrated by pretend play – a domain studied as a cognitive structure (e.g., Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg 1983) and yet also studied and utilized for feeling-based therapy (e.g., Clark and Miller 1997; O’Connor 1991). Through the representative symbolism of play, children indirectly “practice” social and cultural behaviours (through toys and/or with companions) (Bretherton 1984; Haight and Miller 1993; Roopnarine, Johnson, and Hooper 1994). The domain of symbols, in children’s lives, traverses many sociocultural meanings as well a personal meanings, both affective and cognitive.

In practice, children are prone to symbolic transformation of everything from food (alphabet soup as a spelling toy, pancake syrup as an art material, etc.) to bed sheets (for which the pictured characters may serve as nighttime “companions”) to toys meant for symbolic play. A brand’s meaning to children is revealed by understanding how it is used, symbolically, in their lives.

Pg 81
Poetic or symbolic devices hold potential for adept multivocal communication. As already stated, children understand expressive symbolism, metaphor, and narrative from an early age and are able to relate these elements to a brand’s deep symbolic meaning.

Pg 82

Often, successful children’s advertising uses a symbol, such as a character that literally personifies the brand’s symbolic meaning, through appearance and behaviour. Such advertising demonstrates the effectiveness of both narrative and metaphor as means to convey higher order constructs through nonverbal means (Zaltman and Higie 1993) among youth.

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Consumer Kids
by Ed Mayo & Agnes Nairn
2009, Constable, London

pg xiii
Sarah also has a secret. Because she's a busy little girl with lots of contacts in lots of places, she has been recruited through a children's chat room site to work as a sales agent for the Barbie girls MP3 player but she must be sure that it accompanies her wherever she goes: to school, to gym, to Brownies, to training sessions, to dance - everywhere.

pg xiv
Well, in 2007, 7 to 11-year-old girls up and down the UK were recruited by Dubit on behalf of Mattel to market the Barbie Girl MP3 player, while primary school boys of the same age were signed up to sell their Hot Wheel brand.

pg xv
[...] all children are encouraged to want, to buy, to drink, to snack, to collect, to grow up fast and get spending.

This world of consumer kids is not just about shopping and advertising, but about playgrounds, streets, bedrooms, the friendships children make and the new technologies they embrace.

pg xvii
To be sure, there are upsides. Life as a consumer is a story of fun for kids, with all of the pleasures and joys that unfold from their engagement with film, foods, toys gadgets and games. By and large, children embrace these as opportunities, although as we shall see, they are not uncritical.

[...] These are businesses that are making calculated choices to target children at a younger and younger age. They play on their dreams and exploit their vulnerabilities. At the same time, they simultaneously re-sell nostalgic images of youth back to adults in a society that doesn't really want to grow up and can stay young by buying for its children.

The inner world of children is shaped by an outside world which promises happiness, freedom and fulfilment. These three wishes come not from a magic lamp but from being a consumer.

pg 12
The 'need for speed' captures perfectly the mindset of today's consumer kids. There is no question in our minds that, by and large, children enjoy and embrace consumer life as a thrill and a pleasure.

Children as young as 8-10 years old are often already keen consumer kids. As one girl, Becky, 10, from Oswestry put it with clear logic, 'the things in the shops need buying!'

pg 15
An increasing number of studies show that children have an astonishingly strong influence over parents' decisions in major household purchases such as cars, holidays, leisure and even loans.

Today, marketing to children is the way to sell products for parents.

pg 17
Children inhabit a seamless, branded world where celebrities, toys, tv shows and electronics are almost indistinguishable.

pg 18
Who is marketing to children? [...]  It is the small agencies selling information about kids to big consumer corporations and it is the giant media conglomerates which profit from the space and time sold to the highest bidder. [...] It is the shopkeepers who put junk food at the check-out. As the profit motive seeps into all aspects of our lives, the number and nature of the child catchers continues to grow.

pg 20
Parents struggle hard to protect their children from shame - and to make sure that their children's lunchboxes are as full of branded items as their classmates. In this way, snacks like crisps or chocolates are not seen as luxuries but as a way for their children to participate in conventional behaviour. [...] It has long been recognized that not wearing the 'correct clothes' can lead children to embarrassment and bullying. In one UK study, children from poorer backgrounds said they would not talk to children who were not wearing the 'right' trainers.

pg 22
Even very young children have grown to expect disappointment, as one 7-year-old boy explained about Action Man: 'I think I was interested in them [Action Men] because when they advertised them they showed them really like, in places that suited them, but when you actually got them, you didn't actually like the setting . . . it was just your bedroom.'

Today, children's bedrooms have been transformed into hi-tech, intensive media bedsits with more gadgets and goods than would have been shared by a whole family a generation before. [...] Close to 90 per cent of teens have a personal TV but so do almost 60 per cent of the 5- and 6- year-olds just starting school.

pg 31
Laura, aged 9, signs up to a toy website so that she can make a Christmas list to send to all her friends and relatives. Already, she's made public the sorts of toys she likes. This information, along with her personal information, will be stored in a database. The host site now knows just what toys to advertise to Laura.

pg 91
The success of children's junk food in commercial terms is awesome. Of these, the most profitable 'big six' are sweets and chocolates; soft drinks; crisps and savoury snacks; fast food; convenience foods; and pre-sugared breakfast cereals. Well, overall, the confectionary category, for all the family, is now worth an estimated £6 billion per year (in the UK).

pg 92
Soft drinks are poured into children with multi-million pound aspirational marketing campaigns, using athletes, celebrities and the packaging of an 'active lifestyle'.

pg 93
For every £1 spent on advertising fruit and vegetables, the food of which we are supposed to eat at aleast five portions a day, £70 is spent advertising chocolates and snacks.

pg 94
A study by psychologists at the University of Liverpool in 2007 showed that children aged 5 to 7 ate 14-17 per cent more calories after seeing ten adverts for food during a cartoon show than children seeing ten adverts for toys.

Another, Emma from Chingford, commented that 'I get extremely annoyed with the yoghurt and cereals that are endorsed with cartoon characters. My three-year-old is becoming increasingly aware of these products and is starting to make a fuss when I choose the healthier (and probably cheaper) alternatives that of course don't have such appealing packaging.'

Friday, 8 January 2016

Practical: Further development

Packaging

Working from the argument in my essay about smiling, friendly characters used in packaging, I have been trying to develop my own that is very simple and can be used inside the boxes to reinforce positivity or negativity.


A lot of these are too messy or possibly too distracting. I need one that will look good in a pattern.


I settled on a very simple one, that I have multiplied to make a pattern.



From this smiley face I created a sad version of it, to go in the boxes with the bad behaviour.









Printing





The templates printed well, after all the colour of the paper is the main vocal point. I saved money by using a studio printer, as it is very minimal black ink. The quality of the paper meant it was well received.

It took awhile to cut them all out and fold them accordingly - something I'm glad I dedicated a day to, and that I didn't leave it to the last minute.

Instructions


Using the same smiley faces, I made them multicoloured (similar to the box colours) to set the scene for the activity.


I have thought of using a colour wheel for the children to refer to while playing, but I decided against it as it seemed unnecessary. The simpler the better.


Trying to come up with simple instructions is difficult, as the children need to decide for themselves without anything being given away.
I have decided on these simpler steps:


I have used black as a background colour, as it sets a bold scene for the colours, making them pop out. The contrast cannot be ignored.


For the back of the instructions, I want to make an image using the smiley faces as a fun picture to entice the children towards playing the activity.


I decided against the heavy use of yellow, as it may pollute the outcome of the activity. I made some faces happy, and some sad.


I then decided to make all the dull colours sad, and all the vibrant colours happy - as my dissertation is about colour manipulation, after all. This could possibly influence how the children feel about the colours and the behaviours, but in a way that will make it more effective for them and their learning.