I have never met a teenager who is concerned about eating a "whole" breakfast, no, especially if that "whole" breakfast requires eating something that is otherwise unpleasant. Even if this so-called whole breakfast was some scientific truth, proven to improve health outcomes, what teenager would care? Have... you met a teenager?
I don't really see the point of the example either, frankly, but it is what we were given. I expect the contextual parent was just desperately trying to come up with something in the absence of having something meaningful to say.
The point of the example is that there are plenty of things that have no benefit at all, and in fact have obvious downsides that everyone knows about. However, there is an immense amount of marketing around those things to try to make them seem "cool" and minimize their perceived harm. People get addicted to these things, and struggle to stop consuming them even when they know they're literally dying from it.
No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast, but somehow advertisements make people feel comfortable giving them Oero O's. Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect, but people do it, and it's "normal". This is the harm that marketing is capable of.
Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast. Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them. I don't see how the people who are involved in making those ads (or the products) can live with themselves. Convincing people to e.g. set their kids up for a life of obesity and early T2 diabetes from poor dietary habits is pure evil, and that's just one example of horrible (yet completely mundane for them) things marketers do.
Just imagine being a person who wakes up in the morning and thinks about how to best convince children to try ingesting poison[0]:
> Juul Labs, the vaping company that has long insisted it never marketed its products to teenagers, purchased ad space in its early days on numerous youth-focused websites, including those of Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites for middle school and high school students, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney general.
Everyone involved in something like that should be put in prison.
> No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast
Assuming you are going to feed your children Oreos at some point, why not for breakfast?
> Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast.
They could be. If you are going to eat them anyway, why not at breakfast?
> Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them.
Evidently not. Remember, a "complete breakfast" refers to a specific culinary dish that consists of items like bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc.
Who eats a bowl of cookies in addition to all that? I've certainly never met such a person. I've known people who eat bowls of cookies for breakfast, indeed, but when they do that's approximately the only thing they eat, which violates what is told in the advertisement. The advertisement you point to is abundantly clear that these cookies are only to be eaten with all those other foods.
Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and will go off and do their own thing.
> Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and will go off and do their own thing.
It's almost like that was the intention. It's weird how the ad doesn't prominently show the eggs, beans, etc. and talk about how great they are, and instead focuses on how you can totally eat cookies for breakfast!
It is candy. Like 1/3 of the mass is added sugar, and the other 2/3 is more carbs. And what's the complete breakfast that goes with it? Two slices of white-bread toast, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice. Even the "complete" breakfast is garbage. The bowl almost certainly has more than the 1 cup serving as well.
The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about how to use their product as part of a healthy diet (because it isn't a part of a healthy diet). It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate. People received the intended message.
Even if they did show their product as a small side (rather than a centerpiece) of an otherwise healthy breakfast, it's still ridiculous to suggest that you should be giving your kids candy with any regularity.
My oldest kid is 3, and I don't think she has had an Oreo. Will she before she's 18? Probably. Has she had some other treats? Sure. But it's not at all a regular thing. It's certainly not part of a daily diet.
> The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about how to use their product
Assuming we watched the same video, the purpose is to inform the offer of a solution to a problem: The problem of parents needing to rush off to work and the kids off to school, without time to prepare a proper healthy breakfast, with the kids crying "I'm hungry" yet turning their nose up at anything that might be even reasonably healthy.
Hell ya I've given my children candy for breakfast on occasion. We seem to both accept that the occasional treat is not the end of the world. Why not at breakfast? I certainly wouldn't want to make it a habit, but I can also say that from a point of relative privilege in time and resources to cater to other choices. While I think we can agree it is not ideal to turn it into a habit, I can empathize with the parent who is trying to cope with a hard situation by resorting to something that solves the immediate problem.
> ...as part of a healthy diet
While this ends up being true, does this caveat not imply that health is the only problem people face? Clearly that is not true.
> It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate.
Like you imply, I expect most parents have a pang of guilt when buying breakfast candy for their children, but I expect they also don't know what is a better alternative that fits within their life constraints. If you could market to them something that is at least as equally palatable to the picky child, at least as easy to prepare, and actually healthy, I bet you could destroy the cereal market overnight. But without consumers becoming aware of that better solution...
Again, this is a problem the advertisers create. My kid doesn't turn her nose up at healthy food; she asks for it. Want to know why? She doesn't know things like cereal exist. She wouldn't know to ever ask for it, much less demand it. In her mind, strawberries are a treat.
We don't eat candy for breakfast because candy is not food. Thus the issue of fighting to enforce good habits never arises. Without advertisements undermining us, the idea simply does not exist. If it ever occurred to her, it's easy to say "no, candy is not food" and we don't have a TV telling her otherwise.
> My kid doesn't turn her nose up at healthy food; she asks for it.
Yeah, so did my kids at that age. In fact, if given the choice, they would choose the healthy food over the candy. Get back to us in a few years.
On that note, there is nothing to me that suggests the ad in question is even trying to convince you that your unruly 3 year old that you are rushing to get off to school is a problem. It clearly portrays older children. You appear to be the exact embodiment of the idea that ads are not likeable when they are not applicable.
What does seem applicable to your preferences is healthy food. Would you be this miffed if you were shown an ad in a similar vein about a new food product that tastes great and has proven to be healthy? Or would you be glad to learn about it?
> She doesn't know things like cereal exist.
Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food. Seems you're trying to go down the same road as the parallel thread of "advertising is only bad if the product is bad".
Which is hard to deny on some kind of superficial level, sure, but seems to conflate a number of ideas that I'm not sure should be conflated.
Is there something we are supposed to convince you of?
> Do you actually believe that before the 1900s and the invention of advertising, nobody knew about food?
1900s? Even what is considered "modern" advertising dates back to the 17th century – i.e. the 1600s.
> I don't see how you can make such a big claim without resorting to "well, daddy telling you to eat cucumber is a form of advertising".
Okay, but unless "daddy" hales from Mesopotamia, then he didn't really stumble upon one in nature by happenstance. The rest of world only came to learn of the existence of cucumbers through advertising.
Alright, it's all good and dandy to play devil's advocate to everyone, but it would be nice if you didn't mind sharing your definition of "advertising" that dates back to the 1600s and includes "knowing about the existence of vegetables".
By the 1600s, people were letting it be known about wares they wish to sell and whatnot in newspapers; a practice that continues today. This is generally considered the birth of "modern" advertising.
If you want a definition, pick a definition – come up with something on the spot, even. It makes no difference to me.
Of course she would know healthy food exists: her parents show her. That is fundamentally different from a paid message.
I don't see why you wouldn't tie those ideas. Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups and tell kids how cool it is to be strong would be great, but they don't exist. Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried. In the real world, the product generally is somewhere between unnecessary and outright bad. It's obtuse to ignore that.
One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.
> Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food.
Our family didn't see, hear, or read an advertising until myself and siblings were well into our teens .. we were all too far out from cities to get TV, the national broadcasting radio didn't carry ads, etc.
We all knew what healthy food was, the food we grew, raise, and caught. The bulk goods that were ordered.
> Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups would be great, but they don't exist.
Life without advertising is possible, even today - I principally use the internet and haven't seen an add their for decades thanks to sponser blocks and ad blocking.
Wait. Ordered as in you shouted out into the wilderness: "Oh great vast expanse, give me rice!"
Or ordered as in, like, you contacted a business that supplies bulk goods and requested that they fulfill an order? I'm assuming this one, but how did you magically find out about this business without some kind of advertising letting its existence be known?
Hell, even if we believe the former, how did you come to learn that rice (or whatever good it is that you ordered) exists? You (or your parents, or their parents, whatever) were somehow magically born with that knowledge?
> Of course she would know healthy food exists: her parents show her. That is fundamentally different from a paid message.
Advertising does not necessarily imply paid, but let's go down that road. How do you, and therefore your child, know how to obtain the food that your children eat?
In my case, I go to the grocery store. But I only know that there that grocery store to go to because they spend quite a lot of money to let it be known that they exist. And when in the grocery story, they spent quite a lot on marketing to let it be known what I can buy, healthy or otherwise.
It is advertising all the way down.
> Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried.
Well, of course it hasn't been tried. Communism is a work that imagines what life could be like if we achieve post-scarcity. Star-Trek is another adaptation of the same idea. Outside of science fiction, trying either at this juncture is fundamentally impossible. We have not yet succeeded in fulfilling the necessary preconditions that would allow trying.
Yes, indeed, there is hopeful progress towards that goal. We have, according to the UN, achieved post-scarcity in the area of food. It is quite possible that we will get all the way there some day. But not yet. Its time has not yet come.
So what purpose would a "Star-Trek hasn't been tried!" ad actually serve? Just to state the obvious? Perhaps you see it as some kind of gorilla marketing tactic to convince people to watch Star-Trek, or to what you really said, read about the imagined world of communism, because you find it to be entertaining and think others will too?
> One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.
And then there is what the rest of us are talking about. What is not clear is who the second player is. Do you have a split personality, by chance?
> I only know that there that grocery store to go to because they spend quite a lot of money to let it be known that they exist. And when in the grocery story, they spent quite a lot on marketing to let it be known what I can buy, healthy or otherwise.
You know, there is this thing called a “map” that you can use to find places without having them advertize themselves to you. And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?
> You know, there is this thing called a “map” that you can use to find places without having them advertize themselves to you.
A blank map will reveal business destinations? Methinks you've not thought this through.
> And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?
It is not unheard of to see counter service, with the food hidden away in the back. Presenting the food can be deferred until after the sale is made. Ordering online for pickup (or perhaps delivery, although that is less common around here) has also become quite popular, which definitely means you aren't seeing the food beforehand. Most grocery stores try to go for the wholesale experience nowadays because it is a great way to advertise the products, sure, but it is not a strict requirement. Methinks you've not thought this through.
>Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect,
it's grains either way, even if some grains have sugar on them (we have a lot of stuff with too much sugar/salt for taste or preservative purposes. Fresh food every day is sadly a luxury). This seems overly dramatic to the point of dismissing your whole point. Giving "bad breakfast cereal" is neglect? Really?
You're free to only give your kid soylent 3 times a day if you want to minmax health, but you seem to be missing a core point that humans also desire pleasurable senses.
I'm not sure what you mean by it's grains either way. My older kid usually asks for cottage cheese in the morning. She wouldn't know to demand cereal because we've never bought it or even gone into that aisle in the store. She's never heard of it, and advertisers don't have access to her to suggest it.
I don't really see the point of the example either, frankly, but it is what we were given. I expect the contextual parent was just desperately trying to come up with something in the absence of having something meaningful to say.