Question To American Advertisers: Do You Have Children? - Page 2

Articles - Main

I met with the heads of consumer advertising and product development for two of largest brands in America a few years ago and asked them each to look at a short five minute clip of what many young people spend five hours a day watching on MTV. In either case, they couldn't make it through the first two minutes of the vulgar programming they'd helped finance for youth. You would have thought I was sticking needles in their eyes as one executive literally put his hands over his face and insisted, "OK, that's enough!" As I closed my laptop, their painfully awkward body language seemed to shout, "It's brand or lose market share to 12 to 24 year olds, so we have to finance obscene programming for kids!" One of them actually did admit that they get push back from the religious community (that's 75% of Americans that they must surely hope never awaken en-masse; add to that parent teacher groups, concerned educators, conscientious consumer clubs, etc.) and that their ad placements have even resulted in certain boycotts. "Boycotts?" I thought to myself, "can't you bring yourselves to do the honorable thing for the sake of your own families without being forced to do so by product boycotts?"

However, they did raise an interesting point that day. With all the momentum growing in America to restore integrity and decency for the next generation, it's only fair to remind advertisers that there's a burgeoning movement toward values coalescing in America -- one that's powerful enough to humble any brand that elects to stand with toxic pop culture and against their children. Unlike years past, the top 20 brands can change with surprising speed in a well-networked society and a massive, market-altering consumer block.

As a side note to compromising advertisers, the more edgy and profane musicians that you likely fear your grandchildren may start emulating are also the result of your financial partnership with a music television network that's consistently proven just how eager they are to reward bad behavior. To America's international brands, let me say that at last count MTV has 138 international language feeds around the globe, again, largely propped up by your ad dollars. Where perception is indeed reality a half a world away, and where America is already perceived as the "depraved culture of the Great Satan", you may want to reconsider the entertainment you're financing abroad -- if not for the sake of children around the world at least as a matter of national security. Read Boston University's post 9/11 poll entitled, "The Next Generation's Image of Americans", and then take stock of the direct role you're playing in America's deadly and spreading global image crisis. Finally, for God's sake, please give our sons and daughters fighting for your freedoms better international "air support" than low-life, indecent American youth programming.

Talk show host, Bill O'Reilly, once dubbed MTV "the cesspool of television." Well said. However, it's their advertising partners who are steam shoveling the ever-widening cesspool for our children to fall into -- advertisers who seem to have forgotten that, "with great power comes great responsibility."