With Students Leading the Way, Toronto Says No To Video Ads in Schools

Great news! Last night, the Toronto District School Board rejected a proposal to install digital monitors in more than 70 area high schools. The monitors would have been used for news and school announcements and to showcase student projects. The catch? Thirty-percent of the air time – or two hours a day – would have been reserved for ads.

The proposal’s proponents claimed that the ads could earn the district up to $100,000 a year, but opponents of the plan passionately argued against selling their students to marketers. “It is shameful, absolutely shameful, that we are being forced to prostitute ourselves and sell access to the children in this system because we are an underfunded institution,” said trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher. “We’re here to educate our children, not to sell their souls.”

CCFC was alerted to the plan a few hours before the board meeting. We quickly notified our Toronto-area members, many of whom immediately contacted their board representative and urged them to vote against the ad plan.

But the best part of the story is that students played a big part in stopping the ads. The district’s student council opposed the plan, as did the two student representatives on school board. Student Trustee Zach Schwartz told the Toronto Sun, “I do not think it is the school board’s place to leverage students’ minds to the highest bidder. School has to be a learning environment first and foremost and should not be doing things that do not have a direct educational benefit.”

And while proponents of in-school marketing often ask “what’s the big deal?” since ads are everywhere, Student Trustee Jenny Williams reminded her fellow board members precisely why its so important to preserve schools as commercial-free zones: “Students are feeling as though they are going to be bombarded with advertising from various companies and that school will no longer be a 'safe zone' for them.”

So thank you, Toronto, for putting your students first and reminding all of us that, even in these stark economic times, advertising in schools is neither inevitable nor desirable. And for giving impassioned, articulate students like Zach and Jenny a role in shaping their own educational experience.
Read more!

Today is the First Day of Kmart's Marketing Assault on Children

Later today, Alloy Media + Marketing, will launch First Day, its latest web series for children and teens on the Internet channel AlloyTV. An Alloy press release suggests the show will have it all – if by all you mean the full gamut of troubling trends in youth marketing.

Because First Day will air on the web instead of a traditional television channel, the FCC’s rules that dictate strict separation of commercial content and programming matter do not apply. That means that, unlike children’s television shows, First Day can feature product placement. That’s where Kmart comes in. Not only will the characters wear Kmart’s back-to-school fashions (Dream Out Loud by Selena Gomez, Rebecca Bonbon and Bongo), but Kmart actually helped create the script for First Day, so expect the clothes to play a prominent role in the show’s narrative. And if you’re creating a Kmart infomercial, why stop there?

First Day will also feature a unique retail component in each episode. Kmart will "hotspot" its fashions throughout the series, enabling viewers to buy the inspired looks worn by the lead characters by means of a direct link to the products on the Kmart website.

When they click through to the Kmart website, what will they find? Perhaps images like these that are being used to promote the same Bongo line in Seventeen magazine and Teen Vogue, two publications whose readers skew younger than their titles imply:



Or this ad that touts Bongo’s junior line for “back to school” at Kmart’s parent company, Sears:



It’s as if Kmart designed their back-to-school campaign using the exploitative marketers’ handbook. Use sex to sell tween girls on clothes. Create “branded entertainment” so that children won’t realize they’re really watching ads. Use interactive technology so that kids can click right from the “program” they’re watching to the checkout line. Add a viral component so that children’s friendships are commercialized; Kmart is offering applications for kids to upload to their phones so they can tweet their purchases to their friends.

And of course, promote your brand in schools. Kmart is also advertising its fall fashions on Alloy’s controversial in-school television network, Channel One. For students in the 8,000 schools with Channel One, viewing Kmart’s ads will be a compulsory part of the school day. That’s right – Kmart will be using class time paid for by your tax dollars to promote its clothing to a captive audience of students.

Kmart clearly believes that its provocative marketing strategy will result in more sales, but I’m not so sure. There are a growing number of parents who are saying, “if you want my business, treat me and my children with respect.” That’s a lesson that Kmart clearly hasn’t learned. Maybe we need to teach them that this fall.


Read more!

Thinking About Allowing Advertising in Your School? Do Your Homework

With schools facing unprecedented budget shortfalls and teacher layoffs, it’s not surprising that so many are considering what just a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable: allowing corporate advertising in their schools. The San Diego Union Tribune reports that the Sweetwater Union High School District has signed a contract with a company called 4 Visual Media Group to allow advertising on its cafeterias, hallways, and school buses. Meanwhile, schools in the Twin Cities area are signing up with a new company called School Media’s to place ads on children’s lockers.

Who are these companies that hope to profit off of schools’ fiscal crises? Let’s start with 4 Visual Media Group. I stumbled upon their website six months ago when doing some research and couldn’t believe what I saw. In a section of its website labeled “Elementary School Media Kit,” the company boasted to potential advertisers:

4VMG's unique form of advertising caters to a captive audience where the viewer can't "change the channel" or "turn the page.” As such, 4VMG’s product is able to capture the attention of the consumer for longer periods of time and with a more specific focus than traditional billboard style advertising.

This is the company that Sweetwater schools has sold their students to. A company that that refers to schoolchildren as consumers and brags about its ability to deliver a captive audience. The fact that advertising in schools exploits a captive audience is the number one reason (of many) that it’s so wrong. But for 4 Visual Media Group, that’s the selling point. And it gets worse:

In addition to providing “captive audience” advertising, 4VMG offers the option to its advertisers of a unique interactive campaign allowing for each advertisement to possess a “dynamic” component. Promotional codes displayed on the table or panel allow for promotions such as a coupon to be sent to the viewer’s cell phone directly and immediately.

It’s hard to imagine anything more inappropriate than providing advertisers with a platform to send text messages to children while they’re in school. And remember, this is from 4 Visual Media Group’s elementary school media kit.

Or it was. After I shared 4VMG’s plans with Jim Metrock at Obligation, Inc., he posted about the company’s plans on his website and wrote to their President. Shortly after, http://4visualmedia.com/ went dark and, when it relaunched, there was nary a word about text messaging, captive audiences or even advertising in schools at all. That’s why the first rule of anti-school commercialism advocacy is document everything you see before going public with your concerns.

Which brings me to School Media’s, the company that specializes in advertising across students’ lockers. Until a few days ago, their website included this lovely picture:


Now if you’re trying to allay concerns about marketing in schools, what better way than to suggest one of your major advertisers is a company that most parents hold in high regard, like PBS Kids. There’s just one problem: The picture is a fake, as we found out thanks to the magic of Twitter:


A company that wants to send text message advertisements to elementary school students and a company that pretends to have a client that they don't in order to give their predatory marketing a veneer of respectability. These are the kinds of companies that schools will have to deal with if they decide to let advertisers in. Which is just one more reason (I’ll write more soon about the others) why schools should be commercial-free.

Read more!