ORIGIN AND MISSION

Since 2005 the Projeto Criança e Consumo (Children and Consumerism Project) promotes critical awareness about product and services consumption practices by children and teenagers among the Brazilian society. The Project’s pioneer actions include discussion of the negative impacts resulting from massive marketing investments directed to children and the young, such as consumerism, early erotization, the alarming incidence of childhood obesity, violence among the youth, extreme materialism, dissolution of social relations, among others, indicating ways to minimize them. One of the Project’s objectives is to achieve legal banning of every marketing communication directed to children in Brazil. Bearing that in mind, actions have been developed in three areas, in an interdisciplinary way:

Legal Institutional Relations

This department receives and analyzes complaints of abuse by companies from different industries in their marketing communication practices directed to children and adolescents. It also issues indictments, notifications and legal representation forwarded to announcers, advertising agencies, media and regulatory agencies within the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary powers. Furthermore, it supports bills that debate the urgency of ruling advertising in this country, and keep close institutional relationship with opinion makers and other entities through our presence in lectures, conferences and other events.

Education and Research

This area is responsible for assembling and managing a science and culture reference center on commercialism, besides producing and distributing pedagogical material to support parents, educators, and researchers. Dissertations, thesis, and scientific articles on the Project’s focus issues are catalogued and made available. Scholarships are granted to graduate students, who are followed up while producing their end of course papers. The area organizes and presents lectures, forums, and conferences to promote debate on the subject.

Communication and Events

This area coordinates the production of audiovisual awareness campaigns, and documentaries on those issues related to the binomial childhood and commercialism. Events are then created and produced. This nucleus keeps daily news clippings, suggests agendas to the press, and broadcasts the Project’s activities. The area also centralizes all media communication actions, producing newsletters and the website’s content.

A WORD FROM OUR FOUNDER

A good start

In the beginning of 2005, when Instituto Alana (Alana Institute) decided to examine the issues involved in childhood commercialism, we carried out a long research on unhealthy habits among children and adolescents. Since most of the literature we could find was originated in the US and Canada, we decided to take a close look at the work described. It was clear to us that we wanted to set up a campaign to bring up a discussion about the impact caused by the media on children and adolescents consuming habits, moreover, the impact caused by marketing on child education.

So, we took part in the 2005 Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood Summit, which gathered different activists and NGOs to debate on the influence of marketing over children and adolescents habits formation. Susan Linn, teacher and psychologist, was among the speakers. She opened the event with her ventriloquist puppet, and they talked about childhood commercialism in the US. It was a thrill, just fascinating. People there were really committed, intelligent, creative, and had an amazing sense of humor.

Back to Brazil, we carried in our luggage information, ideas, and contacts; among those were many organizations from the North Hemisphere. We also brought a list of titles, and a concrete project: launching in Brazil the book Consuming Kids – Protecting our Children, by Susan Linn. Marketing directed to children is successful in reaching its audience, and I can say that I wasn’t able to find parents or schools that can declare having never had any trouble trying to teach children they should refrain from wishing and asking for so many products that are advertised specifically to them.

We are quite aware of what it entails

Through its social project developed in the outskirts of the East Zone in São Paulo (click here and learn more about the Espaço Alana Project), the Instituto Alana (Alana Institute) faces a wide number of dire examples of childhood commercialism, that come even from one of the sites of lowest human development in Brazil.

Children whose families depend on food provided the government, and yet they refuse to leave their house without lipstick on. Who believe the best thing in the whole world is having long blond hair, just like Barbie. Girls that wear tiny miniskirts and get pregnant in their early teens, and boys that swear to women and drink beer. Mothers who, after much nagging from their children, spend all their money in a Power Rangers doll, and kids who, after getting what they want, play with it for a day or two only to discard it afterwards and engage a new campaign for another novelty advertised on  the telly. Or yet, boys who say that their parents can now buy whatever they want because the such bank is offering them credit that also comes with a toy as gift. Brazilian children and young echo every day a countless number of brands, some of which are among the 10 first words in their newly-acquired vocabulary.

From the North to the South regions, from the large urban centers outskirts to the countryside, they all want to dress and eat the same. They want brands – Nike sneakers, Nestlé chocolates and a Hello Kitty backpack. They would rather not go to the beach or to the countryside because they know they won’t find a TV or a videogame there. They willingly trade as orange juice for a Coke, and rice, beans and kale for a Big Mac and fries.

One must acknowledge that parents are not the only ones responsible for their children’s nagging for products they see on television, for being obese, sexually precocious, or presenting violent behavior. The companies and advertising agencies should hold higher accountability on this matter, for they are the ones that bet on the children’s market, pursuing each age range’s vulnerability in order to produce loyal consumers: the moneymaking children.

In Brazil

It’s been a while since these problems are no longer exclusive to North-America. Just as an example, according to IBOPE’s National Television Panel, Brazilian children from four to eleven years-old spent 4 hours, 48 minutes and 54 seconds in front of a television every day in 2004 – in 2005, the numbers had already increased to 4 hours, 51 minutes and 19 seconds. Brazilian children held the first place of time spent in front of a television, in detriment of their family and school time.

Childhood obesity increased in the US from 5%, in 1964, to 20% today, and it is still going up. In Brazil, according to the First Journey of Nourishment and Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence, at Escola Paulista de Medicina (the São Paulo School of Medicine, located at the University of the State of São Paulo), 14% of children are obese, and 25% are above weight limits, all directly related to increase in volume of investments on child and young marketing.

As it seems, the problem in North America may have started earlier, but their society had also been engaged in retrieving values for some time. Brazil is just starting to make a move in that direction. There are some successful actions next to the Department of Justice and the Legislative Department. Childhood commercialism has no legal ruling in Brazil, just professional self-regulation. That leaves us having to trust that advertisement self-regulatory councils give the matter due consideration, once we live in a country that stands up for freedom of expression (totally suitable when talking about grownups who are able to discern what is best for themselves and the society).  On the other hand, we ought to acknowledge that a four-year-old child is unable to see the difference between a TV commercial and a program.

As Susan Linn states in her book Consuming Kids – Protecting our Children, “marketing to children weakens democratic values when it encourages passivity, conformity and selfishness. It threatens the quality of public education, hinders freedom of expression and adds to public health issues as in childhood obesity, tobacco addiction, and early onset of alcohol use.”

The Projeto Criança e Consumo (Children and Consumerism Project) makes available for parents, and professionals who work with children and teens, tools to support their actions, as well as valuable information on consumerism and the crafting of new values for society, besides offering a reflection on what kind of people are we developing when we allow commercial marketing so much power over our children’s lives.

We believe that information is the first step in the fight to improve values within society, in order to try little by little to remove children from the TV screen (and from semi-hypnosis to apathy), to foster the practice of sports, healthy feeding habits, family and friends interaction time, contact with nature, and more reading and playing.

Ana Lucia Villela
Founder of Instituto Alana