Summary of my group's discussion

On February 2nd, my group and I discussed about two advertising-related topics that we had previously read about. We talked about product placement and publicity aimed at children.

Product placement, or embedded advertising, is the act of integrating a product into a TV show as naturally as possible so that it doesn't really feel like an ad. For example, in the popular TV series "24", Jack Bauer, the hero, is seen driving only Ford vehicles.
Our team found many advantages and disadvantages to this. On the positive side, the show producers don't have to pay for the vehicles, so it's a huge financial support for them. We also thought that embedded ads are a good way to prevent the action from stopping as with regular ads. On the negative side, it's yet another way to add publicity on TV -- and we don't especially need any more publicity into our lives. Ad embedding can also ruin a show because it's often too obvious. However, despite these negative aspects, we felt like embedded advertising was okay.

Our team's opinion about advertising aimed at children, however, was more clear. We thought it was not a good thing to do for many reasons.
Children under the age of 8 can't understand the persuasive intent of ads. In other words, they can't know that there's a company behind the product that's trying to make money. Furthermore, the effect of advertising get worse as kids grow older. Having been strongly influenced in their youth, children will grow up thinking that consuming is the way to be happy. We all thought it was not reasonable to target children since they are influenced more easily than adults. It's a good thing that there is a law in Canada to prohibit these kind of ads, but we don't understand why there isn't such a law in the United States of America.