Vision Conscious Brands has a couple more questions for you.

Thank you so much to everyone who responded to their first questions. If you can, please take another moment and answer these:

1. Of the larger, more mainstream toy companies (found in Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, etc.) which do you see as the most socially responsible and why?  Is there a difference between any of these companies?
 
2. If you had to choose one, which issue would you like companies to address (assuming lead paint is already a priority):

– philanthropy or community action,
– reducing environmental waste in packaging,
– recycling toys or toy parts/materials,
– ethical labor practices (wages and working conditions),
– toy safety parent education, or
– something else.

I’ll start: I don’t see any toy companies as socially responsible. I do think that some are less harmful than others: Melissa and Doug, for example, or the National Geographic toys. This has less to do with the companies and more to do with the products themselves. Since I don’t buy licensed-character toys, I don’t buy from most major toy companies.

I would like toy companies to produce toys that have one purpose — to encourage developmentally appropriate play. If toys encourage other purchases (like “collect the set” or accessories, or, “be sure to see the movie”), I won’t buy it. If the company’s marketing preys on a child’s natural developmental insecurities (”buy this because everyone has one and you don’t want to be the only one without, do you?”), I won’t buy it either.

And you?

Working with corporations to ensure their marketing practices sustain healthy kids and families is a vital component of PEM. When I started on this venture last November, I didn’t think we’d have the opportunity to engage companies — or have our voices heard — quite so soon.

Shari Aaron from Vision Conscious Brands has contacted us for some feedback. She wants to take our opinions to her client corporations to help them see why and how they need to “address environmental, social, and economic (ESE) impact issues.” 

Vision Conscious Brands works with clients who are interested in having a positive social impact. Currently, Ms. Aaron wants to show her clients that consumers do care about corporate social impacts and to prioritize our concerns. She can’t do that — and no company will make the move to change — unless we let them know what we want.

Ms. Aaron has provided some questions to get us going. Please respond in the comments, or if you’d rather, send me an email — lisa (at) parentsforethicalmarketing.org.

Chili, blue milk, MC, Amy, Mom, Neena, Jane, Helen, Jason, Solo Mother, Mrs. Flipphead, alimum, Mom Unplugged, Don Mays, Lisa, Robin, Jeff, Katy, Ariah — I bet you all have something to say.

Questions from Vision Conscious Brands: 

1.  Do you spend time learning about how products are made and pay attention to the social and environmental impacts of how companies produce, market, and sell their products? If yes, how do you evaluate this? Where do you get your information? How do you make your decisions? 

2.  Do you provide your feedback to companies? For example, on how you’d like them to perform on environmental and social measures?

3.  If you are concerned about the environmental and social impacts of toy manufacturers:

Have you noticed the latest news about Mattel toy recalls and their safety concerns of the toys they produce?

Has this lead you to changing your buying habits over the past few months?

Do you think this news has impacted sales in a positive or negative way?

The latest financial reports on Hasbro and Mattel do not reflect that consumers are concerned with issues of the environment or safety. So where can I see how this news impacts parents?

Please take a moment to pass this link along to anyone else — parents, aunts, uncles, friends — who may want to add to the conversation.

And thank you.

Congrats to parent advocate Susan Pagan, Susan Linn, and CCFC — you’ve inspired us all to continue the fight to obliterate America’s happiness!

Not all parents think that advertising to children is bad, as I discovered from the recent email and comment onslaught about the Target ad controversy. Many people, proponents of the free market economy, have suggested that if consumers want something, they will buy it, corporations will make money, shareholders will benefit and all is good. Companies have the right to market to kids. That’s the way it is supposed to work. 

What do parents want? asks marketer/mom MC Milker in her comment here.  An end to all marketing directed at children? That’s unrealistic, she says. And I have to – reluctantly — agree.

I would argue, however, that there is a point when more more more becomes too much.

Rob Walker (Murketing) examines logos and spin-off products in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Among 39 different Tide detergent spin-off products, “All that’s missing are sugar free- and menthol.”

Hugh Graham tackles the designer’s place in our consumer culture, noting the volume of toothpaste and related products in the store aisles:

I wonder whether it’s possible that our society in general may have gone just a bit too far, and that the designers and product managers and marketers are spending too much of their creative resources on selling products with limited value and without any real differentiation.

I’m not arguing that there isn’t valuable product innovation going on, but I tend to doubt the big change involves one of the 50 swirly paste/gel combos on every American supermarket aisle.

This is how I feel about the choices we have for children’s products. Fifty different Bratz dolls, fifty different Barbie dolls. Anything left has a Disney Princess painted on it. No differentiation. No innovation.

So, if we can’t stop corporations from trying to sell to our kids, perhaps we can make it worth their while to reconsider how they are doing it. Do their marketing practices and products sustain the health of children and families?

This is what I want from corporations and marketers, and the basis for creating Parents for Ethical Marketing in the first place:

1.  Do not take advantage of my child’s underdeveloped reasoning skills or her insecurities to convince her she must have a product.

2.  Stay out of the public schools. Advertising to kids while they are truly a captive audience is, well, kinda creepy. 

3.  Do not make toys that are lethal. Honest to God, how hard is it to figure out if something you are selling is a choking hazard? And if you insist on producing toys in China, here’s a hint: Buy toys made in the other line.

4.  For every new product that encourages my daughter to express her inner princess, provide something that encourages her inner jock. For every fashion doll with clothing and hair accessories, create a doll with a backpack and some books. For every movie or cartoon or book that focuses on a girl’s search for true love, make one where she pursues a meaningful goal.

5.  Stop encouraging my kids to be crap collectors (I’m talking to you, McDonald’s). Hugh Graham concludes:

It occurs to me that there needs to be a new paradigm of consumption, one that will work for business, community, and environment. I don’t know what form this new paradigm will take, but I believe it has something to do with learning to appreciate the real value of things and their place in our world.

Designers have an opportunity to engage in this paradigm shift. Part of the story lies in creating products that have intrinsic and lasting value, products that I like to call artisinal. And part of the story lies in better communicating the value of the artisinal. I believe that designers have an ethical duty to work toward the end of disposable culture. Of course, this isn’t going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen in vacuum. But it is going to happen, whether we choose to be a part of the process or not. Better to engage the future rather than have it thrust upon us.

That’s me. What do YOU want?

Bad news first: What must a company do to get children to buy candy?

When I was a kid, we took our nickels to Dick’s Food Market to choose between bubble gum, Tootsie Pops, or chocolate! And that was it! None of these fancy branded candy products for us!

OK, so I may be exaggerating. Slightly.

So, what did it take for this company to be able to write this press release headline: Candy Dynamics Celebrates Substantial Growth in Distribution and Sales of Their Innovative Toxic Waste Brand?

It took:

– significant investments in print advertising in kid-directed magazines (Nickelodeon and Disney Adventures),
– product sampling at theme parks, summer camps, movie theaters, and festivals,
– ongoing monthly and seasonally themed radio promotions,
– sponsorship of MTV Power Girls tween stars The Gemz summer and fall tours,
– pro-environment initiatives like the Toxic Takedown Challenge™,
– re-designing the website into a free-for-all of fun and environmental information.

Yowza. Words like kid-directed, tween, and initiatives are what put me on a yellow threat level. I mean orange. How do we eliminate, or at least lessen, the pervasiveness of advertising in our kids’ lives if that’s what it takes for a small company (like Candy Dynamics) to make it?

Candy Dynamics is promoting their brand, Toxic Waste – a candy so sour you can barely keep it in your mouth — as a friend to the environment. They use recycled or recyclable materials in their packaging, and according to their president, Karen Windle-Burcham,

In having named our sour candy line Toxic Waste, we are hoping to strike a chord with kids and their parents that will motivate them to act upon the issues behind this name.

I’m intrigued by this idea, although they have a ways to go to make that connection apparent (on their website, at least).

Now the good news: PEM has been contacted by an advertising/marketing/branding/whatever agency and they are asking: What do parents want? And how can we help corporations move in that direction?

Seems that developing channels of communication to corporations aligns quite well with PEM’s mission to encourage them to adopt responsible marketing practices. I will keep you updated.

Photo courtesy Jeff Adair.

A coalition of advocacy organizations, led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, is asking the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) to stop advertising movies rated PG-13 to young children.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission urged the MPAA to reconsider their guidelines on where and how PG-13 movies are advertised and marketed.

Trouble is, the MPAA doesn’t have any guidelines.

The advocacy organizations, including Parents for Ethical Marketing, would like to restrict advertising PG-13 movies during children’s TV shows, prohibit fast-food toy giveaways aimed at young children for PG-13 movies, and insure that any toys based on a movie are sold with an age recommendation consistent with the film’s rating.

Cheryl Lanza, a rep from the United Church of Christ, Inc., who also signed the request, says:

It is distressing that the industry response to parental concerns about media content is almost always to place the full burden on parents. These industry members essentially offer parents a Hobson’s choice: either expose your children to content that you find unacceptable, or withdraw your children from popular culture.  This serves no one. We all benefit with more mutual communication and understanding, not less.

Agree? Contact Dan Glickman, MPAA Chair and CEO, by calling (202) 293-1966 or faxing (202) 296-7410.

The letter to the MPAA was also signed by:

Action Coalition for Media Education
Alliance for Childhood
Benton Foundation
Center for a New American Dream
Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness
Commercial Alert
Concerned Educators Allied for a Safe Environment (CEASE)
Dads and Daughters
Hardy Girls Healthy Women
Industry Ears
Kids Can Make a Difference
The Motherhood Project
National Institute on Media and the Family
Obligation, Inc.
Parents Television Council
Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (TRUCE)

This piece of inspirational blogging is brought to you by Feministing:

A Feministing reader found an offensive pair of junior-sized underwear at Walmart, took a photo, and sent it to the blog. The story is picked up other bloggers. Outrage ensues, and within a couple days, the panties are pulled from stores.

A victory for online activism!

(Of course, when family-friendly Fox News links to your blog, you have to deal with the consequences: Feministing is publishing select hate mail today.)

And in The Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the lure of the Disney Princesses:

. . . the Princesses exert their pull through a dark and undeniable eroticism. They’re sexy little wenches, for one thing. Snow White has gotten slimmer and bustier over the years; Ariel wears nothing but a bikini top (though, admittedly, she is half fish.) In faithful imitation, the 3-year-old in my life flounces around with her tiara askew and her Princess gown sliding off her shoulder, looking for all the world like a London socialite after a hard night of cocaine and booze. Then she demands a poison apple and falls to the floor in a beautiful swoon. Pass the Rohypnol-laced margarita, please.

It may be old-fashioned to say so, but sex–and especially some middle-aged man’s twisted version thereof–doesn’t belong in the pre-K playroom.

Guess I’m old-fashioned that way too. When it arrives in the U.S. (if it hasn’t already), I will deny my daughter her right to participate in the Miss Disney Princess Pageant.