Shaping Youth BETA BLOG

September 2, 2010 Without a doubt, guerrilla marketing campaigns can be effective disruptors as well as clever marketing and teaching tools for advertising AND media literacy.

But what happens when “attention” trumps common sense and branding ethics like this Sony  ambient ad campaign? Its proliferation is akin to the “Captive” audience billboard debacle awhile back.

As soon as this sophomoric, “SEX! (made you look!) ” unoriginal cheapshot from Sony hit the streets in ‘aren’t we clever’ mode, my parent posse lit up my inbox like a holiday tree. Pleas to “make them stop,” calls for regulatory ruin, boycotts, and a cacophony of righteously indignant, raw, angry people were ready to storm their ad agency with fist-pumping zeal.

I usually assess whether ‘ignoring’ it sans commentary is the way to go, or firing up the keyboard to lash another rebel yell for industry accountability in media/marketing environs where ‘mop up’ from ‘shock schlock’ is increasingly part of the media plan.

It’s not even corporate/client ‘risk-taking’ anymore, the tactics are pure, subversive ad strategy. As in, “Let’s throw it out there and then apologize for it later if we have to.”

The good news? There’s gleeful karma knowing that morally bankrupt marketers giving the industry a bad name are actually pouring gasoline on a potentially lethal smoldering fire that could ignite any minute and annihilate them in self-immolation. (more…)

September 1, 2010 It’s the first of September, as the first day of school angst bubbles up throughout the nation on either side of this ‘premiere’ week. (many have started school already, some are about to)

A welcoming ‘first day?’ Hardly. This is classic online product placement meets mean girl drek in “First Day: The Series,” an abysmal branding collaboration between  K-Mart and Alloy Media. “A new series from the executive producers of Pretty Little Liars” made me wince,  knowing full well that Alloy isn’t exactly on my BFF list (per my piece about their Gossip Girl show) And that they’d be bringing their behavioral blights on the trashy media landscape to relentlessly push their vapid values via digital engagement to kids.

I suppose I should be relieved this horrid absurdity is limited to a ‘merchantainment’ digital ditty rather than a full blown TV series, but they’ve hit a new low by giving us a snapshot of “what’s wrong with our culture” in a handy compressed 8-series, 8+minutes each episodic, which enables them to skirt the FTC rules of product integration by taking it online to target kids with snark, sneers and oh, yes, LOTS of sales pitches. Careful retailing industry, branding backlash could cost you even more in this recession.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating the teencentric crud and cues, here’s a transcript of some of the opening dialog, as the bonafide mean girl upends her older sibling in her own “pathetic” home: “First day of school determines who you’re gonna be friends with, which determines if a guy is gonna like you which determines if you’ll ever be kissed, because after awhile you build it up and you get all nervous, until you’re 25 and totally unkissable…and…” Yadayada. Trust me it gets even worse. (more…)

August 9, 2010 Consider this a ‘preliminary post’ to address the Eminem/Rihanna video controversy that’s scorching the blogosphere with the Love the Way You Lie lyrics being deconstructed to a farethewell. (read the comments on EW’s music mix, Jezebel, The Guardian, an important one from the Gainesville Sun/GatorSports angle, and  CB, “where escapism can be smart” just to name a few)

Far beyond the flames of dysfunctional relationships and abusively unhealthy dating drama depicted in the video, the notion of media literacy deconstructing this conversation is an important one to uncork with teens, albeit a tough and potentially traumatic one.

I’m out of my league here, as I feel like it’s all hairsplitting when it comes to violence and abuse in relationships. To me, so-called “common couple violence” is oxymoronic at best (what’s ‘common’ about wailing on each other?) so that’s part of the ‘social norming’ backdraft I’d like to PREVENT entering the lexicon (or heads!) of developing teens who may take a media cue that “rough stuff is passion play”…Turns my stomach, really.

So, I have a call in to Susan Risdon, press liason for the NDVH National Domestic Violence Hotline in Washington and the Love Is Respect National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline to try to untangle the verbiage and lexicon that’s stymied many a social media conversation about what does and doesn’t constitute “DV.” (dating violence? domestic violence? can they be used interchangeably?)

When BOTH parties are sparring with verbal/physical toxicity, does this merit a different category than when the power-base of terrorism whirls through like a tornado coming from only ONE-side of manipulation, control and intimidation? These are the kinds of semantics that I don’t remotely pretend to know, despite having just read the upcoming book Tornado Warning by Actionist(TM) Elin Waldal, her own poignant survivor’s memoir of teen dating violence and its impact on her worldview and her kids. (more…)

June 15, 2010 Forget the fact that my freshman daughter is friends with JV football guys…

…Or that digital reputations flinging about on social media (FB, Formspring, etc) warn of male ‘players’ and females being ‘played’ with reckless, feckless inaccuracy bordering on slanderous distortion (this seems to mirror many school’s virtual stage, reflecting more performance art than reality show)…

…But it does add further context for my coal hot mad reaction when I read last week’s NYT op-ed, “Their Dangerous Swagger.”

Boys at a private grade school were literally ‘game pooling’ incoming freshman girls as conquests for “sport” in ‘Fantasy Football’ draft picks as boy toys. I seethed with a new level of fire far beyond my slow burn of volcanic rumblings and steam vents like Pele, the Hawaiian goddess, ready to blow.

As we look at how we’re raising boys to men, in a ‘one step forward two steps back’ symbiotic relationship of gender portrayal of men in media (American Dad, Family Guy, and other devolved Seth MacFarlane tripe) it IS worth looking at context and corollaries a bit this Father’s Day week… (more…)

May 17, 2010 As irony would have it, on Thurs, May 13, in New York City, a small tribe of thought leaders convened on how to best address rampant sexualization of youth in media and marketing.

Each invitee of this diverse group was hand-selected for the purpose of “bringing their entire communities” into the conversation and sharing next steps, best practices, and public health data to turn up the static and turn down the media volume of toxic cues blasting kids.

Who was at the table for this intimate planning session? Academic rockstars like Jean Kilbourne author of So Sexy So Soon, filmmaker of just released Killing Us Softly4 and one of the earliest pioneers in this conversation long ago…Then there was Shaping Youth advisory board member Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D, co-author of Packaging Girlhood (and one of the  core crew initiating this important dialog, along with True Child, Women’s Media Center, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, etc.) and yes, yours truly, who was honored to be amidst such luminaries

All told, about two dozen heavy hitters dedicated to changing the channel of media influence to a healthier frequency convened, discussing how fast our culture is frying brain cells into full tilt desensitization (as evidenced by my own Miley Cyrus/L.A. Times yawn awhile back). Meanwhile…(simultaneously, ahem…) (more…)

May 4, 2010 A few years back I commented on the post Confessions of a Lingerie Lover by Fae Goodman on Alternet and copped to being “one and the same.”

Fae uncorked a doozy of a conversation that brought out the best/worst in femme debates as she pithily contrasted the difference between adult media messages and ‘costuming’ cues and the marketer’s desire to target adolescents, salivating with ‘aspirational’ wannabe merchandising and “KGOY’ effect (kids getting older younger). As the author summed in her subhead,

“I’m all for sex appeal, but using butts as billboards is disturbing among adult women — and downright scary in prepubescent girls….Are ‘extreme low-rise v-string’ panties the gateway drug to peekaboo thongs and push-up bustiers, or are they something even more disturbing? Regardless of what VS considers its target audience, the Pink line just may be the Joe Camel of early adolescent sexuality — an adult industry using childlike imagery to drum up interest.”

Heartily agreed, way back in 2006 (the very first days of our pre-launch fledgling Shaping Youth org) and responded with this diatribe on toxic tween marketing (full text after the jump) Now, fast forward to 2010 with amped up social norms of commodification of kids, sexualized media and marketing at every turn, (beyond Victoria’s Secret/LimitedToo Candies and Kohls have now taken it mainstream) and the no-holds barred raunch of American Apparel encouraging kids to plaster their backsides on the web… (more…)

Feb. 9, 2010 Update: Almost 1000 signatures already & expanding global on ipetitions now! Join in! Orig article 2-2-10:

“Confident about the junk in your trunk? Show us your assets! Post a photo of your booty’s best side for judgment,” invites American Apparel in their latest sexist slop.

Yep, they’ve launched their new ad campaign to “search for the best bottom in the world.” Could it be your daughter’s?

As Thalia, age 19, says, “You don’t need to exploit us to benefit your company. Someone that is a CEO should have more common sense, don’t you think?” Um, no. Sadly, it’s a sorry statement of our flash-n-trash sexist times where corporate profiteers figure “anything for a buck” regardless of the fallout.

Gee, AA, try empowering girls instead of consuming them. Listening to girls instead of objectifying them…Time for a gloves off, no-holds barred, “girlcott” (petition here).

If AA had the testicular fortitude to peel back the quantifiable damage and harm being done (full APA report here) they might learn something to further their brand, but instead, they’ve once again gone to the most unoriginal, base level, ‘nudie-cutie-sex sells’ pornification par usuale, while simultaneously putting these girls in legal jeopardy with new ‘sexting prosecution’ laws cropping up in some states.

Parents, teens, girls and those who love them, join Hardy Girls Healthy Women and Shaping Youth Advisory Board members of Packaging Girlhood to send a crystal clear message to American Apparel… (more…)