New media literacy campaign teaches ‘tweens’ about advertising

[Frank W. Baker]

This eSchool news story is about the FTC's unveiling of its "advertising literacy" online game and educational materials: admongo.gov

[David Kleeman]

Frank, looks like you and I hit "post" at exactly the same time!

[David Kleeman]

I'll save people the link, as Ryan noted that the discussion should take place here and not on the general forum. Here's what I originally posted:

First, full disclosure - I was a consultant to this project's development, for Fleishman-Hillard under contract from the FTC.

I'd be interested to hear any reactions from people who have visited Admongo. Scholastic will be testing its efficacy, but I'd also love to know what educators, game developers, media lit folks think about it.

Here's a NYT piece about the launch.

Hoping for non-knee-jerk responses. One Tweeter posted that Admongo "wouldn't need if corps were responsible," which is like saying we wouldn't need to teach print literacy if there weren't some bad books. Others have talked about Admongo teaching kids "the evils of advertising." Untrue, the game teaches kids to recognize ads all around, to decode the techniques used, and to ask core questions like "who is responsible for this ad" and "what do they want me to do."

More fodder for discussion:

In NPR's "Marketplace's" coverage of the launch, Susan Linn of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood said it was a waste of time because "the fundamental mission of advertising is to make us, you know, believe that we need these products. And that doesn't have to do with cognition, it has to do with our feelings and emotions."

Aren't cognition and our feelings and emotions inextricably linked? If we can't identify and analyze our emotions and what is acting on them, and criticially evaluate response options, why do so many people find therapy useful? Or English classes that compel deeper reading of books with strong emotional themes?

[Frank W. Baker]

While I like the site, I wish the FTC had gone a step further-- partnering with real advertisers (who target tweens) to use real ads instead of fake ads that resemble real ones. On the TODAY show this morning, Matt Lauer took the spokesman for the FTC through two actual commercials (Apple Jacks and AXE deoderant) and asked him what was really going on. That's valuable, I think...but those commercials are not part of this website or curriculum.

[David Kleeman]

But, I assume you can see why a Federal regulator can't pick individual companies' ads to feature and deconstruct. The potential for conflict of interest -- positive and negative -- is huge. I could see that, however, as being part of the accompanying curriculum -- asking students to bring in real ads of all types and perform the same analyses that Admongo calls for.

I agree that this is just a starting point, and just one element in a needed comprehensive curriculum. I'd love to see this used in conjunction with "The Story of Stuff" as a consideration of why there is such proliferation of marketing and advertising in the first place.

[Frank W. Baker]

No I don't understand why the FTC could not approach a huge corp and say "we want to partner" for the purpose of educating the young consumer. Obviously, the big companies want a media ILLITERATE population, (as Jean Kilbourne is fond of saying) otherwise they'd jump on this bandwagon. But the big corps want to SELL not EDUCATE, so joining forces, even if they could, is not their goal or objective.

[David Kleeman]

My point is that if they approached any single corporation and that company said "yes," then every other company in the same field (or not...) could say company A had received preferential treatment.

If the company said "no," and the FTC was in the position of admonishing or penalizing that company down the line, it could say that it was being punished for not playing along.

Maybe I'm wrong -- can you think of another example where a regulatory body, charged with being neutral rule-makers and referrees, partnered with a single company in a way that could provide promotional advantage or perception of favoritism?

[Frank W. Baker]

No, I can't think of an example, but I can point to any number of large textbook publishers who have used actual ads, commercials, film clips, etc. in their texts and videos and online components. My point being: real ads make better media literacy teaching materials than fake ones, in my opinion..

[Dianna Morton]

I checked this site out a while back-- sorely lacking in my opinion.

[Frank W. Baker]

Yes, while it is a good first step, we could do a lot more. Have you seen the resources on my Media Literacy Clearinghouse website?