Dear Mr. Vale:

We are writing about the International Advertising Association's (IAA) "Give A Kid a Hand" ad campaign to encourage people to volunteer with kids.  The campaign's goal, you said, is to "help [children] realize their full potential."

There is a more direct way for IAA and advertising firms to help children "realize their full potential": stop advertising to children.  We want you to let children alone.  That would halt the psychological, physical, and emotional harm that advertisers inflict upon children.

Every day, advertising firms direct a strategically organized, pre-meditated, callous barrage of ads at innocent and impressionable children.  They employ sophisticated psychological research techniques to develop potent methods of psychological manipulation to sell products to children, and lure them into destructive values and the addictions of alcoholism, smoking, gambling and overconsumption.  The goal of the advertising industry is not to promote the health, creativity, or well-being of children.  Rather, it is to generate profits for corporations.

The magnitude of this commercial bombardment of children is enormous and entirely unacceptable.  According to Consumer Reports, the average American child views more than 30,000 television commercials each year.  Newer, more coercive ways to make children watch ads are gaining strength.  For example, the Channel One program of direct advertising now reaches about eight million children each day in schools. Joel Babbit, then-president of Channel One explained why advertisers like it: "The biggest selling point to advertisers [is]....we are forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials."
 
The targeting of children by advertisers has become widespread and commonplace.  James U. McNeal, an expert in marketing to children, wrote recently that "Virtually every consumer-goods industry, from airlines to zinnia-seed sellers, targets kids." General Mills executive Wayne Chilicki said that "When it comes to targeting kid consumers, we at General Mills follow the Proctor & Gamble model of 'cradle to grave'...We believe in getting them early and having them for life."

Advertising firms use techniques that harm children and families, including:

• Convincing children that purchasing products will solve their problems and make them happy.
• Exploiting a child's emotional weaknesses, such as his or her sense of insecurity, inferiority, need to be loved, powerlessness, and need to fit in.  Nancy Shalek, then-president of Shalek Advertising Agency, explained: "Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you're a loser.  Kids are very sensitive to that.  If you tell them to buy something, they are resistant.  But if you tell them that they'll be a dork if they don't, you've got their attention.  You open up emotional vulnerabilities and it's very easy to do with kids because they're the most emotionally vulnerable."
• Fueling anger and rebelliousness among youth.  According to Rick Litman, a partner at Kid 2 Kid Research, "marketing is a unique process in which corporations learn to use youth rebellion to more effectively target a product and sell a product."
• Manipulating children to nag their parents to buy products.  In other words, pitting children against their own parents, and causing strife within families.  As Cheryl Idell, director of strategic planning and research at Western International Media, explains "It's not just getting kids to whine, it's giving them a specific reason to ask for the product."

The advertising industry has a serious values problem.  It puts its own profits above the health of children.  You are growing rich by taking advantage of children.  That is wrong.  We are calling on the IAA and advertising firms to stop advertising to children.
 
Mike Searles, president of Kids ‘R' Us, once explained that "If you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to come....Companies are saying, ‘Hey, I want to own the kid younger and younger.'"

We don't want advertising firms to "own" children of any age.  If the IAA and advertising firms truly aspire to help children to "realize their full potential," you will let them alone, and give them back their health, their time, and their minds.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader
Gary Ruskin, director, Commercial Alert
Juliet Schor, author, The Overspent American
Diane Levin, author, Remote Control Childhood
Adele Faber, co-author, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop, Archdiocese of Detroit
Betsy Taylor, executive director, Center for a New American Dream
Aline D. Wolf, author, Nurturing the Spirit: In Non-Sectarian Classrooms
Michael Jacobson, co-author, Marketing Madness
Henry Labalme, executive director, TV-Free America
Alfie Kohn, author, No Contest: The Case Against Competition
Susan Karol Martel, writer, psychotherapist
Douglas Sloan, professor of History and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Jane Levine, Ed.D., director and founder, Kids Can Make a Difference
Linda Coco, writer and researcher
Brita Butler-Wall, visiting assistant professor, School of Education, Seattle University
Diane Morrison, research professor, University of Washington