Read more
Zusatztext An important book Informationen zum Autor Ed Mayo is a leading campaigner and commentator on social and economic issues and is Chief Executive of Consumer Focus. Ed has written widely, including research on children as consumers, described by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian as 'a groundbreaking study'. Ed helped to found the Fairtrade brand and was the strategist behind the world's most successful anti-poverty campaign, Jubilee 2000. The Guardian nominated him as one of the top 100 most influential social innovators and he is a World Economics Forum 'Young Global Leader'. Ed is married with three children and lives in South East London. Agnes Nairn is an academic researcher, writer, speaker and consultant. She is Professor of Marketing at two of Europe's leading business schools, EM-Lyon Business School in France and RSM Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Agnes's academic research has been published in a wide range of international journals and her policy-related work includes the first study of the links between media exposure, materialism and self-esteem in UK children. She has also written on Barbie torture, how children use David Beckham to understand moral values, covert marketing techniques on the internet and how neuroscience throws new light on how children relate to advertising. She is on the government panel convened by the Department of Children, Schools and Families to assess the impact of the commercial world on children. Agnes is married with two children and lives in Bath. Klappentext This book will shock you. Consumer Kids shows how, more than ever before, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, our children are being tracked and targeted by big business, which sells them back their dreams, packages their childhood and exploits their vulnerabilities. It looks at why children torture their Barbies, how boys feel about David Beckham, why mums are cooler than dads, why children in the toughest families make the most ardent consumers and why, above all, too much marketing makes you unhappy. This hard-hitting exposé is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the deeper implications of the runaway commercial world we live in. The first book to expose just how our kids are targeted as consumers and why it matters for us all. Introduction Who's your child working for? Sarah is a bright and bubbly girl. She enjoys Brownies on Mondays, modern dance on Tuesdays and she's just got a place in the elite gymnastics squad at the local Eagles club, which means training three times a week and travelling to competitions around the country. She has an easy-going nature, making her a little 'people magnet' - always the centre of fun and laughter at school. She goes on the computer a lot and has just started using the internet to play games and chat. 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 Girl MP3 player. It's quite a tough job. OK, someone bought her a brand new, shiny, pink Barbie Girl 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. And she can't just leave it in the locker room: she has been instructed to extol the many and various virtues of the Barbie Girl MP3 player to everyone she meets and urge them to buy one too. What's more, she has been briefed to take copious photos of each and every one of these sales missions and mail them back to Mattel HQ. Her demanding job description also includes constructing and designing her own fan site for the MP3 player and conscripting her extended network of friends into membership. And ...
