ad continuum So does product placement become the modern adulthood to the modern childhood?
Wording for the keywords have been changed to gain a better understanding with fewer (or more) words:
Product placement is a form of advertising that embeds brands into forms of media; it implants ideas that provides an emotional platform between the brand and the consumer.
Branding targets the psychosocial implications, expressive, terminal，as well as social values, in order to create the ultimate brand loyalty between itself and the consumer.
Childhood is a period where cognitive, physical, social and emotional capacities are being developed, and product placement have increasingly exploited such to deliver brands and manipulate their perceptions.
Branding is a multi-faceted aspect within the world of design, and from the experimentation and research that I’ve been conducting in the recent weeks, it is about an implementation of an idea, particularly within the world of product placement. I can now relate my current progress back to my original research question: “Whether product placement can have a positive brand exposure towards children”, but rather, to put it simply, it is questioning “whether product placement can implement a positive idea towards children”
This opportunity has opened my eyes to experience unique perspectives on the city; the small moments we don't always pay too much attention to in the chaos that is the bombardment of brands.
When I was calculating the brand index scores of the brands that children aged 8-12 (this phase is also known as ‘tweens’) from data that I had gathered, I found some surprising results; even though we live in an increasingly digital world, where more things are done on the internet, from the findings from the brand index scores, tweens are actually the most influenced by sweets and chocolate, followed by electronic gadgets, rather than websites, or TV shows. From this piece of discovery, however, it has to be considered where the source of influence, as well as the content of the influence.
Whilst compiling the colour wheel, there were moments where I had to pause and reconsider which part of the colour spectrum the logo itself belonged to, as the colour of some brands, where their packaging colour is intact throughout their range, was also considered.
I finally began some primary research onto my surroundings; finding product placements, implanting of ideas that encompassed me left, right and centre. Watching media that was perhaps, a little too naïve for yours truly, but the more I look into this subject, the more I become hooked into it, it is almost like as if all of these brands have amassed into a giant narrative within play, and has become a dictation towards me rather than an influence. This reminded me of a conversation that I had with an Accountant-cum-Politics-graduate, whom had a anecdote to share:
I was watching television with my cousin once, and the age difference is rather large – 10 years apart, so naturally, and watching his, his type of programmes on television…God, I couldn’t even handle the break in between the shows; the products that are associated with the cartoon is played to entice the viewer. Jeez, that gave me a headache.
What she said reminded me of Steve Jobs's saying (Mitchell, 2011)
"When you’re young, you look at television and think - There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought."
— Steve Jobs
Our generation is a generation that is the advertised, as well as the advertiser; branding has become the dictator to children, to childhood.
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