Talking About Advertising

Ask students:

• What is advertising? What is it for? Where do we see advertising? (Make sure to include TV, the Internet, and food packaging in the answers.)
• How do marketers try to convince children that a certain toy, game or cereal is really the best? What strategies do they use? Explain some of the strategies that marketers use to make children want to buy a particular product, such as:
• featuring kids a few years older than the target age group, to make the product seem really “cool”
• using sound effects, heightened colour, dramatic camera angles and music to make the products in the ads look exciting
• showing everyone having a great time in the ads because they know people want to buy products that make them feel good

Once students begin to understand that advertisements are messages that are designed to make them want to buy things — and can identify and talk about the different types of ads they see on TV — you can then move on to advertising on the Internet.

Ask students:

• Have they ever seen advertising on the Internet? (On a computer, a tablet, a phone or a game console?)
• What kind of ads have they seen?
• What things were being advertised?
• Do the ads they see online look like the ads they see on TV? How are they the same? How are they different?