Advertising in public schools is back in the news as School Media’s (sic), a new Coon Rapids, Minnesota-based company, begins to pitch their in-school advertising and locker-wrapping services to area schools, including Centennial School District:

Centennial schools may soon tout everything from Crayola crayons to Nickelodeon’s “Dora the Explorer” on their lockers.

Centennial School District was scheduled to vote on using School Media’s services a week ago, but didn’t [pdf]:

Advertising in Schools: Superintendent Stremick shared the feedback received on advertising in the schools. Discussion followed. Board would like gather more feedback from community and district staff before proceeding further. No School Board action was required.

The story hit the AP wire and got the attention of FOX & Friends, a morning talk show on the FOX News Network. The producer contacted me while considering doing a segment on the topic. It’s since postponed, but she asked to contact me again “as the story develops.”

Advertising in schools, called a “sacred cow” by the National School Public Relations Association, has long been debated as schools struggle to find solutions to their funding problems. (See also: Will new Minnesota legislation invite corporate interests into the classroom?) These are especially tough times for schools, which have been put in the position of coming up with their own creative solutions to the problems created by state and federal governments and/or mismanaged school districts (depending on who you ask).

Enter corporate marketers like PepsiCo or ad brokers like the now-defunct Bus Radio or School Media’s, who bring funding solutions to schools in a seemingly win-win situation: The schools get to hire the teachers they need, and the companies make a profit. So what’s the harm?

The harm has been documented in reports by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University since 1998:

It is easy to understand why marketers would target children. They influence their parents’ spending, they spend a lot of money themselves, and when they develop preferences for brands in childhood, their loyalty often lasts a lifetime. Because children spend so much time in schools, corporations pursue access to them . . . . For their part, school districts, especially those facing higher costs and shrinking budgets, often see advertising as a potential source of additional funds. Some are also attracted to advertising and marketing activities because they believe that participating in such activities demonstrates goodwill toward the business community.

. . . Overall, marketing activities in schools actively threaten high-quality education by causing psychological, health-related, and academic harm to students. Commercial activities offer children experiences primarily intended to serve the sponsors and not the children themselves; they are therefore inherently “mis-educative,” because they promote unreflective consumption rather than critical thinking and rational decision making.

Emphasis mine. Corporate advertising messages in schools are in a direct conflict with the purpose and goals of education. Watch Nickelodeon! while researchers and educators are trying to encourage kids to move away from screens and into books. Eat Doritos! and Drink Pepsi! while nutritionists and district food services are working desperately to teach good eating habits and stem obesity.

Why don’t companies pursue placing ads in front of parents, instead? District websites, for example, are probably more frequented by adults than children. Could it be that it’s more cost-effective to influence a child — with years of spending power ahead — than it is to try to persuade adults to change their buying habits?

Children are easier targets, indeed.

As a parent who advocates for ethical marketing, I often hear the counterarguments: If you don’t like the ads, just turn off your television/don’t allow that website/don’t read those magazines. And that’s just what I do.

But I can’t keep my kids out of school.

Here’s a comment from a Facebook posting I read (status is private so you’ll have to trust me) about School Media’s wrapped lockers:

Locker ads are especially offensive to me. That locker is the closest thing a student has to a personal space while at school. It’s an anchor to personal sanity in an otherwise hectic, depersonalizing environment.

CCFC’s Josh Golin offers some advice to districts considering working with in-school advertising companies in Thinking About Allowing Advertising in Your School? Do Your Homework.

More from the Commercialism in Education Research Unit:

Policy and Statutory Responses to Advertising and Marketing in Schools (2010)
Click: The Twelfth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2008-2009
At Sea in a Marketing-Saturated World: The Eleventh Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2007-2008
Adrift: Schools in a Total Marketing Environment. The Tenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2006-2007
The Ninth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2005-2006
Empty Calories: Commercializing Activities in America’s Schools (2005)
Virtually Everywhere: Marketing to Children in America’s Schools (2004)
No Student Left Unsold (2003)
What’s in a Name? The Corporate Branding of America’s Schools (2002)
Buy Me! Buy Me! (2001)
Commercialism@School.com (2000)
Cashing in on Kids (1999)
Sponsored Schools and Commercialized Classrooms (1998)

Cash-strapped schools are in the news again as many districts consider turning to in-school advertising. What’s the issue? Read this post I wrote earlier this year for Change.org, Corporate Advertising: Not the Solution to Funding Woes.

Kucinich Pushes To End Tax Subsidies For Junk Food Advertising [Huffington Post]
Pulling the Plug on Marketing Junk Food to Kids [Care2]
Tell the USDA to Restrict Junk Food Ads Aimed at Children [Change.org]
Open Thread: Should the FDA Control Junk Food Marketing? [Fast Company]
The first Cannes Lion for not advertising at all [alexbogusky’s posterous]

I’ve been thinking a lot about default settings lately.

This is probably because of  the most recent Microsoft Word upgrade at my office, which has has been painful. The formatting defaults to a funky extra before- and after-paragraph spacing that makes every document look like a freshman term paper padded to reach the required length. I alter this formatting on the documents I edit. But I wonder, why don’t people change the default settings in the first place?

Perhaps it’s too hard? Or maybe people don’t notice? Or even care?

This is how I view the Disney Corporation in our lives: It’s become a default setting.

The easiest thing to do is to go Disney. At the grocery store, in the drive-through, buying back-to-school supplies, birthday presents, and board games. Watching television. And on the computer. The Disney marketing machine has made it virtually impossible for families to live without them.

Of course, I’ve had a lot of complaints about Disney and its marketing to kids. Then last winter, Disney saw to it that the three-person Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) lost the home and support it had with the Judge Baker Children’s Center after CCFC had exposed Disney’s false marketing claims about Baby Einstein videos.

I’d had it with Disney. So, we’ve decided to switch our default settings. We’re going to live Disney-free for year. No Disney. No ABC. No ESPN. No Hulu (ouch). No Club Penguin. No Toy Story 3. Nothing that Disney owns. For one year.

Join us at A Magical Year Without Disney. Who knows what we’ll find when we don’t default to Disney.

PEM friend Anne Elizabeth Moore puts together a Q and A on our Year Without Disney at Democracy Guest List.

Tobacco companies will have a tougher time with their cradle-to-grave marketing strategies thanks to new regulations that go into effect today. Parts of the new regulations focus on stemming big tobacco’s efforts to hook kids.

So today I’m thrilled to announce that I will be working with Ramsey Tobacco Coalition to help educate parents and the public about tobacco marketing and children. Their mission: Reducing youth exposure to tobacco influences. That’s marketing, folks. I’ll be posting on their Facebook page and will be tweeting at @RamseyTobacco. This fall I’ll also be educating parents about the marketing techniques that tobacco companies use to get children hooked on nicotine.

For those who know me, the elephant in the room here is my own history of smoking. When I began writing about marketing and advertising directed at children in my first blog, and even when I started Parents for Ethical Marketing, I was a smoker. I never smoked in front of my kids — a delusional caveat that allowed me to continue without guilt — but I couldn’t address the issue of kids and tobacco marketing in my work, because I was a smoker.

My path to quitting was long and winding. And full of potholes and construction zones. It was a tough battle. Several things came together around the same time so that I finally had the determination to survive the nicotine cravings:

– a few simple words from Spotty one evening at Drinking Liberally;

– reading Jean Kilbourne’s Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel (truly a light bulb moment and highly recommended for women who want to quit);

– the introduction of Pink Camel No. 9 cigarettes (and a friend pointing out that my dollars supported such marketing nonsense);

– and, although it pains me to admit this: Minnesota’s statewide smoking ban.

I quit almost three years ago; I still have bad days.

And I never, ever want my daughters to start smoking. So, to big tobacco marketers: We’ve got your number. Stay away from our kids.

Here’s more on the St. Paul students from Ramsey Tobacco Coalition who were recently honored as Youth Advocates of the Year from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

Seems Disney/ABC continues its Jekyll/Hyde relationship with its Miley Cyrus property. And here’s a second background post describing my issues with Disney. Originally published April, 2008.

The blogosphere is full of discussions about Miley Cyrus and her photos in Vanity Fair. I’m surprised by how many writers find nothing wrong with the photo — but then, they didn’t attend a conference on the sexualization of children recently.

With that in mind, here’s some worth reading: At Girl Media Maven, Nancy Gruver has a great discussion going in the comments of Who’s the Grown Up Here? and a follow-up post where she discusses what all these sexualized images of girls in the media are doing to our girls. And Blue Milk has some terrific visuals to help explain why some of us have been speaking out on this for a while.

This is the kind of conversation I’m hesitant to join, because I feel so bad for this 15-year-old girl, heart of an entertainment franchise, and the life she has ahead of her.

But, Corporate Babysitter that I am, I have to say that there’s one thing missing from this conversation: Disney. Disney owns Miley Cyrus (as lifestyle brand Hannah Montana) to the tune of one billion dollars.

Now, Disney seems to be upset by the photos:

A Disney spokeswoman, Patti McTeague, faulted Vanity Fair for the photo. “Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines,” she said.

Emphasis mine. Disney would know something about creating situations to manipulate kids in order to sell something.

After all, the Disney Princess machine alone is worth four billion dollars (see Disney Reaches to the Crib to Extend Princess Magic, Wall Street Journal).

Disney is arguably the greatest marketed brand ever.

And for their part in the creation of the Miley Cyrus who appears in Vanity Fair, they should not feign indignation. They should be ashamed.

Today begins a little background on my relationship with Disney. This post was originally published in November, 2007.

Footnoted’s post on Disney sprawl (among other things) unfortunately brought back some painful memories of an ill-fated trip to Disney World.

I was working for a for-profit university and our task was to fly to Disney World to investigate the possibility of hosting a student event there. Even though I’m pretty anti-Disney, I’m not, say, a Miss Trunchbull, so I used the free ticket there as an excuse to take my then-seven-year-old daughter.

She was thrilled, of course, but had to endure a day and a half of meetings with grown-ups.

I cannot even begin to describe the idiocracy of those meetings.

And the sales guys.

Since we would be bringing quite a large group of attendees, they were willing to bend over backwards for us: Shrink-wrapping the Disney buses with our logo, adding desks to about 300 of their guest rooms, and concealing the life-sized fake-town backdrop at the “extreme stunt show” on a backlot of Disney-MGM Studios.

When they took us to lunch, it was “on the mouse.” If I heard Well, that’s the Disney difference! one more time, I was going to throw up.

Anyway, my favorite moment was when one of the sales guys leaned down to my daughter:

Sales guy: So, who’s your favorite Disney Princess, honey?
Daughter: Umm . . . (looks frantically at her mother) . . . I don’t know.
Sales guy: Oh, it’s so hard to choose just one, isn’t it?
Me: No, that’s not it. She doesn’t know who you are talking about.
Sales guy:

Today Disney spends four billion dollars marketing Disney princesses to girls. And babies. And brides. And everyone else. Amazon.com lists no fewer than 7,806 Disney Princess “products.”

My daughter and I stayed an extra day at Disney World (it rained). Disney did not get that event contract with us. And I can guarantee that I’ll never set foot in Disney World again.

by Susan Linn, Ed.D., May 2010 CCFC News

I know I’m not alone in my inability to stop thinking about that oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes it’s foremost in my thoughts, but often it’s more in the background, like chronic anxiety, or some dull but persistent toothache. And, as we go about our daily work at CCFC, I’m thinking more than ever about sustainability and its links to our mission of reclaiming childhood from corporate marketers.  We can’t achieve a sustainable society without curbing consumption.

Lifetime consumer habits begin in childhood. That’s one big reason why children are targeted so intensely with marketing and why it needs to stop. As Josh Golin and I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post on Earth Day last year, “Marketing doesn’t just sell children individual products.  Its dominant message is that consumption is the path to happiness and self-fulfillment.” Marketers sell consumption, not just as a lifestyle, but as the lifestyle. Limiting children’s exposure to corporate marketing allows them the time and space to learn to take their pleasure in other people, nature, and their own creative play, rather than relying for satisfaction on the things that corporations sell. Children deserve a commercial-free childhood, and the earth deserves it as well.

So, while what may be the worst un-natural environmental disaster of all time unfolds, I am reminded that the commercialization of childhood affects so much more than families currently raising children.  The primacy of marketplace values — and instilling those values into the next generation — imperils everyone. It’s true that children benefit immediately and directly when we limit their exposure to commercial marketing.  But the impact is so much broader. Allowing kids to grow up free from bombardment by marketing messages is our best chance to nurture adults who recognize the value of preserving, rather than exploiting, environmental riches-who define themselves more as stewards than consumers. By working for the rights of children to grow up-and the freedom for parents to raise them-without being undermined by commercialism, CCFC promotes a more sustainable world.