Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Talking to kids about advertising

Today's kids have become the most marketed-to generation in history, due to their spending power and their future influence as adult consumers. By talking to kids about advertising - how it works and how they're targeted - we can help them to become more savvy as consumers and more resistant to the pressures to be "cool."

Marketing to Teens: Gender Roles in Advertising - Lesson

In this lesson students explore gender roles in advertising by taking an ad campaign they have seen which is specifically directed to one gender, and redesigning the campaign to target the opposite gender.

Kids, Alcohol and Advertising - Lesson 3: Understanding Brands

Understanding Brands is the third in this series and is intended as a stepping stone to Lesson 4, Interpreting Media Messages. In this lesson, students learn about the importance of branding for developing customer loyalty and recognition of products.

Tobacco Labels

In this lesson, students debate the effectiveness of health warning labels on tobacco products.

Relationships and Sexuality in the Media

In this lesson, students learn to question media representations of gender, relationships and sexuality. After a brief “myth busting” quiz about relationships in the media and a reminder of the constructed nature of media products, the teacher leads the class in an analysis of the messages about gender, sex and relationships communicated by beer and alcohol ads. Students analyze the messages communicated by their favourite media types and then contrast it with their own experience.