Blog #8 Advertising for Children

So as I read through the article by Johnson, there were many observations that they made that I had already noticed in advertisements geared towards children. I actually haven't watched commercials geared towards children in a while, but on occasion I see them and they pretty much follow the same old formula. Commercials geared towards boys or advertising boy products are usually voiced over by a man. The man typically doesn't speak in a calm, soothing voice either. He uses a voice that is commanding and sounds very enthusiastic, especially if the commercial is for a toy truck or car. Of course, only boys are present in these commercials and rarely minorities are present.

For commercials geared towards girls, they are voiced over by females and like the boys commercials, only girls are present. Yet the girls do not get the same commanding, enthusiastic voice that boys do. In fact, they usually get a voice that sounds somewhat high-pitched or what I like to call the "Disney-princess" voice. It's very light and sing-songy and is mostly used for commercials advertising girl toys. Now if the product is used for something that is related to tweens, then the voice of a teenage girl is used who talks just the way a teenager would (excessive use of "like").

When boys and girls are present together, they play their roles respectively. More importantly, as I mentioned before, commercials aren't very diverse in terms of race. They are moreso than they were before, but Caucasians still dominate commercials. I have seen some commercials in Spanish that are geared towards Mexican children and they are a complete re-enactment of their English counterpart.

I think it's disappointing that the commercials limit who can buy them or who they are geared towards. Maybe there are some girls who would find boys toys appealing because they seem so cool and maybe there are boys who are curious about products geared towards girls. Of course, another interesting point is how it would be more acceptable for a girl to be interested in toys/products geared towards boys but not vice versa.