Creepy! Are Cereal Box Characters Designed to Make Eye Contact With Your Children? — video included

by Lily Dane
The Daily Sheeple
April 4th, 2014

If you needed another reason to avoid taking your children down the cereal aisle at the grocery store, here it is: insidious cereal box characters seem to be trying to make eye contact with your kiddos.

While it’s no surprise that marketing techniques like product package design and placement in stores are used to attract buyers, some methods are more exploitative than others. Directing advertising to adults who understand marketing tactics and have the ability to make informed decisions is quite different than employing psychology-based tricks designed to lure innocent kids into brand loyalty.

According to the American Psychological Association:

Most children under age 6 cannot distinguish between programming and advertising and children under age 8 do not understand the persuasive intent of advertising. Advertising directed at children this young is by its very nature exploitative. Children have a remarkable ability to recall content from the ads to which they have been exposed. Product preference has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and to strengthen with repeated exposures. Product preferences affect children’s product purchase requests and these requests influence parents’ purchasing decisions.

Cereal companies know this, and they have long exploited that vulnerability through the use of charming and engaging cartoon characters in their commercials and on their packaging. They are the third biggest food marketer to children – and they spend millions trying to entice children to buy their products, according to a 2012 report by The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity:

Companies spent $264 million in measured media on kid-targeted cereals last year, up 34% from 2008, according to the report, which analyzes the nutritional content and advertising habits of 16 brands the center determined to be aimed directly at children. General Mills, which accounted for eight brands in the report such as Lucky Charms and Trix, spent the most at $142 million, a 27% increase from 2008, according to the report. Kellogg Co. hiked spending by 47%, shoveling $108 million into five kid-targeted brands, including Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops. Post Holdings increased spending by 17% to $13.8 million on its two child-targeted brands, Pebbles and Honeycomb.

Researchers at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab conducted a study to examine the influence of cereal box spokes-characters. The results of that study were published earlier this week, and the findings were interesting.

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