Associate Professor, Dev Samaj College for Women, Chandigarh, India
Online published on 3 December, 2014.
Companies are increasingly marketing to young people. Using motivation research, they delve deep into the psychology of young people – their target audience. Often they succeed. While there is no harm in selling fashionable products that people think are “cool”, the way companies have been able to attach this label to harmful products raises ethical questions. The “cool” label is today attached to selling of sexually explicit products and games to young children, encouraging young women and children to smoke and drink, or to buy other harmful products. Indeed, young people have taken to beers, soft drinks, fast food, smoking, consuming alcohol and expensive shoes simply because they are seen as cool. This has raised the heckles not only of parents but is attracting the attention of regulators world-wide.
This paper describes some of the questionable methods used to market products that are harmful and also examines the ethical questions related to such practices, such as: This raises several questions:
Is it ethical to delve deep into a child's or a young person's psychology and then create ads that play on their vulnerabilities?
Are we creating a generation of zombies who are incapable of behaving naturally but
Follow the improper mannerisms of the latest TV serial or the latest movie in their day-to-day behaviour?
Is the marketing of cool making us culturally bankrupt?
How can companies be stopped from targeting young people at least for products that are patently harmful?
We also attempt to answer the questions whether the marketing of cool has crossed the borders of impropriety and is encouraging questionable behaviour among the future generations.
