Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Marketing to Teens: Talking Back

This lesson helps teens become active consumers by encouraging them to 'talk back' to advertisers when they have concerns.

Body Positive Ads

This lesson helps students understand the relationship between body image and marketing by exploring Aerie and Dove’s body positive advertising campaigns. Students begin by reading about the impact that body positive advertising campaigns have on companies, as well as on their consumers. Students will then look at body positive ads aimed towards men and read research about how there is a lack of representation in this field. They will then deconstruct a series of traditional ads compared to body positive ones and discuss how marketers target "ideal beauty" messages to both men and women and whether they are effective. Finally, students will evaluate whether body positive ads are effective in general or not through discussion.

Reading Media

In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea of “reading media” through a medium’s rules of notice and the maker’s framing choices of what to include and what to emphasize. After a modeled and then guided introduction to these ideas, students analyze a work to identify how it uses rules of notice and framing and consider what meaning these choices communicate.

Looking At Food Advertising - Lesson

This lesson introduces students to the ways in which advertising can affect their food choices.

What do Halloween costumes say?

This activity, adaptable across grades, is designed to help students look critically at the Halloween costumes marketed to them.