Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Online Marketing to Kids: Strategies and Techniques

This lesson introduces students to the online marketing techniques that are used to target children on the Internet. It begins with a guided discussion about the similarities and differences between traditional marketing methods and online advertising and why the Internet is such a desirable medium for advertisers to reach young people. Student activities include a survey of the marketing techniques used on several commercial websites for children; the creation of a commercial website for kids that incorporates common marketing strategies; and an analysis of case studies about online marketing to young people.

Adversmarts: Introduction to Food Advertising Online

In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea of online advertising and look at the ways that marketers create immersive and appealing online environments that draw and hold children’s attention. After studying common advertising techniques, students play an educational online game that lets them put their learning into action by “creating” a site advertising a fictitious cereal, Co-Co Crunch.

Close Reading Genre

The Close Reading Genre workshop trains teachers to use genre as a tool to help students engage with media. It explores how genres can be identified and analyzed through their characteristics, tropes and industry practices and demonstrates how this can be done with key genres such as advertising and news.

Online Commerce

Kids don’t just see ads in media: more and more, they buy things right on their screens. This section looks at the ways that young people shop online and how they can be manipulated into spending.

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.