![]() | This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.(January 2014) |
Advertisements in schools is a controversial issue that is debated in the United States. Naming rights of sports stadiums and fields, sponsorship of sports teams, placement of signage, vending machine product selection and placement, and free products that children can take home or keep at school are all prominent forms of advertisements in schools.
Debates on advertisements in schools can vary depending on factors such as location, age group, school type, and the context of the advertisement (e.g., during after-school events or within the school premises). Some argue that limited or monitored advertisements and sponsorships, such as those on school buses or in school sports, can provide much-needed funding for school events, fundraisers, activities, or school supplies that the school might otherwise lack. Advocates of this perspective contend that such advertising can be a practical solution to support educational initiatives. [1] On the other hand, there are those who believe that schools should remain advertisement-free, emphasizing concerns about potential commercial influence on students or the distraction it may pose to the learning environment. The viewpoints on this subject can vary depending on factors such as the placement of advertisements and the extent of limitations imposed on them.
Many state laws permit advertising to be sold on the exterior and fewer permit advertising on the interior of school buses. However, many of these laws prohibit ads for political speech, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, drugs, or material of sexual nature. [2]
Restaurant and fast-food chains frequently offer free treats in the form of coupons to students who receive good grades or have good attendance on their report card. [3] In certain districts, free cell phones are offered to students who receive text messages from companies promoting academic success. [4] Additionally, educational materials are donated to classrooms as a way to support a curriculum. Oftentimes these materials contain the company's logo or views that are subjective to the company. [5]
Channel One News was a program designed for and broadcast to elementary, middle and high school students. It contained commercial advertising. Its advertising regulations changed over the years; they restricted advertisements related to food and beverages that were inconsistent with their healthy lifestyle initiatives, gambling, motion pictures above PG-13, politics, religion, and tobacco or alcohol products. [6]
Sponsorship of school sports teams and fields or stadiums is common. [7] Many high school teams have received uniforms, shoes, and funding for upkeep of their stadiums or fields in exchange for naming rights or the team wearing the sponsor's logo. Companies will also offer discounts to the team members they are sponsoring as a way to push sales. [8]
Sponsorship also comes in the form of funds given to have the company's logo put on report cards and supply lists. Companies know back-to-school time is a great time to increase profit. By putting their marketing material on school supply lists it encourages parents to shop at their stores instead of others. [9]
Food and beverage companies spend on average $150 million each year advertising in schools. [10] Many of the drinks and foods are advertised and made available through vending machines. Even with regulations on what types of foods are allowed to be sold and marketed, the food and drink companies are still able to advertise their brand to students. [11]
According to some school administrators, states have cut funding for K-12 education consistently for the last eight years causing many districts to cut jobs, increase class size, and cut spending on supplies. Using advertisements in schools is a way to raise money for school districts. As a matter of fact, schools, especially in less affluent areas, need ways to raise money in order to keep school programs alive and alleviate the financial burden presented by the funding cuts.
One argument in favor of corporate advertising is that children must be sufficiently prepared for the world beyond graduation, and essential components of this preparation (for such a media-saturated future) include media literacy and economics. Some states have implemented these courses into their graduation requirements to meet the demand, but most boards of education stop short of directly immersing an entire school community into these topics by deregulating their advertising policies.
Proponents argue that children must be educated and seasoned as interpreters of marketing strategies from a young age so that they become discerning and conscious consumers as adults. Today, young children have less authority to make purchases directly than they have in past decades, so there has been suggestion that parental supervision will serve as the only necessary check on the influence of any deliberate advertising in Elementary schools. [12] Furthermore, it has been suggested that stripping K–12 education of visible corporate advertising reinforces a common misconception that the education system itself is immune from heavy influence from private enterprise, and this leads to a distorted understanding of the relationships between state agencies and their various vendors in both children and adults.
Another argument is that some advertisements may create a positive correlation to a healthy diet or lifestyle products.[ citation needed ]
According to critics, many advertisements endorse products that are detrimental to children's health, such as unhealthy food, and some people argue that children are more easily drawn to persuasive advertisements than adults. [13] It has also been argued that schools should be environments where students will not be distracted from their work by advertisements.[ according to whom? ]
Channel One News has 2 minutes of advertising for every 12 minutes of news. [14] Students can lose up to a full day of class time over a year for advertisements. [15]
There is a concern that children do not understand the motivation behind ads. Children under the age of 13 are a vulnerable population that lacks the executive functioning skills to comprehend what the advertisement is trying to sell and the techniques used to persuade and frame customer decisions. Children do not possess the same knowledge of advertising tactics as adults and are more susceptible to their persuasive intent. Elementary school children are not necessarily able to comprehend the fact that advertising agencies may have a different perspective from their own. [16]
Each state in the United States of America can define additional regulations for advertising in its local schools.
The National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs: Nutrition Standards for All Foods Sold in School, as Required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was updated in 2013 to reform school lunch options. This placed restrictions on what could be served in vending machines and sold on school grounds, with the exception of fundraisers (often candy bars or doughnuts) and after-school events. [17]
This caused a shift in advertising for many companies as it phased out advertising of sugary drinks and "snack" foods. While the Coca-Cola Company would not be able to advertise Coca-Cola, it can advertise other product lines such as Diet Coke and Dasani. [11]
In 2006 the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative was implemented by the Council of Better Business Bureaus as a way to encourage corporations to regulate what they advertise to children. It is not required for businesses to participate in this regulation and there are no legal ramifications if corporations do not participate. [18]
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings each day. Coca-Cola ranked No. 94 in the 2024 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Based on Interbrand's "best global brand" study of 2023, Coca-Cola was the world's sixth most valuable brand.
Irn-Bru is a Scottish carbonated soft drink, often described as "Scotland's other national drink". Introduced in 1901, the drink is produced in Westfield, Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, by A.G. Barr of Glasgow. As well as being sold throughout the United Kingdom, Irn-Bru is available throughout the world and can usually be bought where there is a significant community of people from Scotland. The brand also has its own tartan. It has been the top-selling soft drink in Scotland for over a century, competing directly with global brands such as Coca-Cola.
Moxie is a brand of carbonated beverage that is among the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. It was created around 1876 by Augustin Thompson as a patent medicine called "Moxie Nerve Food" and was produced in Lowell, Massachusetts. The sweet soda is similar to root beer, but with a bitter aftertaste. It is flavored with gentian root extract, an extremely bitter substance commonly used in herbal medicine.
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink with a cola flavor, manufactured by PepsiCo. As of 2023, Pepsi is the second most valuable soft drink brand worldwide behind Coca-Cola; the two share a long-standing rivalry in what has been called the "cola wars".
A soft drink is any water-based flavored drink, usually but not necessarily carbonated, and typically including added sweetener. Flavors used can be natural or artificial. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a sugar substitute, or some combination of these. Soft drinks may also contain caffeine, colorings, preservatives and other ingredients.
The Cola wars are the long-time rivalry between soft drink producers The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, who have engaged in mutually-targeted marketing campaigns for the direct competition between each company's product lines, especially their flagship colas, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Beginning in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the competition escalated until it became known as the cola wars.
Surge is a citrus-flavored soft drink first produced in the 1990s by the Coca-Cola Company to compete with Pepsi's Mountain Dew. Surge was advertised as having a more "hardcore" edge, much like Mountain Dew's advertising at the time, in an attempt to lure customers away from Pepsi. It was originally launched in Norway as Urge in 1996, and was so popular that it was released in the United States as Surge in 1997. Lagging sales caused production to be ended in 2003 for most markets.
Fresca is a grapefruit-flavored citrus soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company. Borrowing the word Fresca from Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, it was introduced in the United States in 1966. Originally a bottled sugar-free diet soda, sugar sweetened versions were introduced in some markets.
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. It manufactures, sells and markets soft drinks including Coca-Cola, other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, and alcoholic beverages. Its stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a component of the DJIA and the S&P 500 and S&P 100 indexes.
OK Soda is a discontinued soft drink created in 1993 that courted the American Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including neo-noir design, chain letters and deliberately negative publicity. After the soda did not sell well in select test markets, it was officially declared out of production in 1995 before reaching nationwide distribution. The drink's slogan was "Things are going to be OK."
Powerade is a sports drink created and sold by the Coca-Cola Company. Its primary competitor is Gatorade, which is owned by PepsiCo.
Mello Yello is a highly caffeinated, citrus-flavored soft drink produced, distributed and created by the Coca-Cola Company that was introduced on March 12, 1979, to compete with PepsiCo's Mountain Dew.
Fruitopia is a fruit-flavored drink introduced by the Coca-Cola Company's successful Minute Maid brand in 1994 and targeted at teens and young adults. According to New York Times business reports, it was invented as part of a push by Minute Maid to capitalize on the success of Snapple and other flavored tea drinks. The brand gained substantial hype in the mid-1990s before enduring lagging sales by the decade's end. While still available in Canada and Australia as a juice brand, in 2003, Fruitopia was phased out in most of the United States where it had struggled for several years. However, select flavors have since been revamped under Minute Maid. Use of the Fruitopia brand name continues through various beverages in numerous countries, including some McDonald's restaurant locations in the United States, which carry the drink to this day.
Fast food advertising promotes fast food products and utilizes numerous aspects to reach out to the public.
NOS is an energy drink sold in 16-and-24-US-fluid-ounce cans. The drink was also distributed in a bottle designed to look like a NOS tank but this bottle has been discontinued. Formerly a property of the Coca-Cola Company, it is currently produced by Monster Beverage and licensed by Holley Performance, which owns the trademark. NOS contains 160 mg of caffeine, with an unknown amount of taurine and guarana. L-Theanine was removed as a "CMPLX6" ingredient in 2016, with inositol becoming listed as one of the six featured ingredients on the can. NOS Energy is currently available in Original, GT Grape, and Sonic Sour.
Food marketing is the marketing of food products. It brings together the food producer and the consumer through a chain of marketing activities.
Advertising to children refers to the act of advertising products or services to children as defined by national laws and advertising standards.
Advertising is a form of selling a product to a certain audience in which communication is intended to persuade an audience to purchase products, ideals or services regardless of whether they want or need them. While advertising can be seen as a way to inform the audience about a certain product or idea it also comes with a cost because the sellers have to find a way to show the seller interest in their product. It is not without social costs. Unsolicited commercial email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent that they are a major nuisance to internet users, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers. Advertising increasingly invades public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. Advertising frequently uses psychological pressure on the intended consumer, which may be harmful. As a result of these criticisms, the advertising industry has seen low approval rates in surveys and negative cultural portrayals.
The United States food and beverage industry has increased the amount of advertising that intensively and aggressively targets children through multiple channels. Food marketers know that the youth consumers have equal if not more spending power than adults, they hold purchasing influence, and have the potential to be lifelong consumers. The advertisements for products predominantly high in sugar and fat have increased and have had an effect on the major health epidemic in the US of Childhood obesity, and as such are inconsistent with national dietary recommendations. Food advertisements have moved from the television into the classroom. Marketing companies are exploring new creative techniques to reach their target audience, young children, through promotions, contests, and incentive programs. As a result, the US has progressively been placing regulations on how much advertising is allowed during children's programming.
Coming Together is a 2-minute ad created and distributed by the Coca-Cola Company and launched on the night of January 14, 2013, on several cable networks.