Resources for Teachers - Marketing & Consumerism

Advertising techniques

How advertising works… even when you don’t realize it. Just letting kids know they’re being advertised to is not enough to make them engage critically with an ad. Helping kids recognize how advertising works is essential, too. Even young kids can become more skeptical about marketing when they’re told why and how ads try to persuade them.

Watching the Elections - Lesson

In this lesson students look at how elections are media events.

Marketing to Teens: Gotta Have It!

In this lesson students identify how we associate social status with  brand name products, and how we believe others perceive us by what we wear. Students will also explore the notion of “brand identity” and how companies use social networks, and advertising strategies to create parasocial relationships with their consumers. To assess their learning, students then independently analyze the identity of a brand of their choice and create a mock ad that more openly communicates its implicit appeal. 

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.

Thinking Like a Tobacco Company: Grades 7-9 - Lesson

In this lesson, students learn how the tobacco industry targets the needs, wishes and desires of young people in order to sell cigarettes.