In this study, Doolittle and Pepper argue that, in attempting to determine the influence that advertising has on children, it is essential that there should be better understanding of the communication processes involved while children view television advertisements, including the manner in which children perceive and react to these advertisements. This study offers extensive analysis of the content and form of the television advertisements aimed at children in 1974. Their main objective in this study was to offer an updated version of similar studies conducted by Barcus (1977) and Winick et al. (1971), so as to determine any changes that may have occurred. They argued that, by making comparisons between the studies in this field, it would be possible to determine the direction in which advertising was moving in terms of the portrayal of current lifestyles in children's television advertisements.
Method Doolittle and Pepper recorded a number of television advertisements broadcast on network channels in the USA, on Saturday morning (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.), February 9, 1974. They chose this particular day to collect data because they argued that it is representative of a typical weekend, rather than a major holiday such as Christmas where there is often an excessive amount of product promotion. Sixty separate advertisements were recorded. These ran on the three networks from one to as many as eight times, and this totalled 162 advertisement exposures in all. Of the 63 advertisements, 49 (82%) were used for the actual content analysis. The advertisements were then divided into seven product categories as follows (p. 133/4): 1. Breakfast Food (40%) 2. Sweets (Candy and gum) (18%) 3. Snacks (Cookies and soft drinks) (12%) 4. Meal Food (Spaghetti and ravioli) (7%) 5. Other Food (not breakfast, meal or snack) (7%) 6. Toys (7%) 7. Other products (8%) After much pre-testing, the final coding instrument contained 28 variables which were considered relevant to the study. These variables examined five broad areas of content and presentation, as follows (p. 134): 1. elements of production and style e.g. pace, editing and audio; 2. product presentation e.g. usage on screen; 3. buying rationale e.g. personal advancement, product enjoyment; 4. characterisation e.g. presence or absence of children/adults, sex roles; 5. ambience e.g. reality v. fantasy, mood, story presentation. The coding of the advertisements emerged as having an intercoder reliability rating of 94% between the authors themselves and two broadcasting undergraduate students from the University of Wisconsin. Findings The analysis was presented for the total number of advertisement exposures or 'tokens' (146) rather than for each different advertisement or 'type'. The authors then addressed the four areas of content and presentation set out at the start of the study, and these findings emerged as follows: Form Live-on-film production was used exclusively in roughly 40% of the sample while animation was used solely in only 25% of the advertisements. The advertisements in the various product categories frequently employed a variety of production techniques, with the exception of Breakfast Food advertisements, since over 70% used a combination of live and animated techniques (p. 134) Audio The sound in all the advertisements in the sample contained voice, which was often an off-camera voice-over. However, Doolittle and Pepper make no specifications about the actual sex of the voice-over at this stage in the study, leaving any comment about voice-over sex until their discussion of sex characterisations later in the study. Perhaps one can assume that, judging by past conventions, there was a predominance of male voice-over occurrences. In addition to the voices heard, almost 75% of the advertisements used some form of music, over half of which incorporated singing (p.135) Pace The authors determined the nature of the pace by the frequency of shot change in each advertisement. The majority (40%) of the advertisements were found to be moderately paced, while slow pacing was used least. Product Presentation Product use, such as eating food or playing with a toy, was featured in 75% of the advertisements. There was a tendency for the product to be shown being used live. Indeed, all the advertisements for toys relied on live footage, as did most of the breakfast food and sweet advertisements. Buying Rationale The authors identified five major rationales in their study; two emphasised the superiority of the product and the enjoyment gained from using that product; the remaining two were less direct in that they referred to personal advancement via product use and pleasing product associations. Product promotion emerged as not being directly related to the product qualities (p. 136). Product Enjoyment This was found to be the major reason given for product purchase in over 40% of the advertisements in the sample. Included in this count were all the Toy and Other Food advertisements, over 75% of Sweets and 50% of Snack advertisements. Product Superiority This was generally found to be achieved through direct or implied comparison with another product. This was the case in 25% of all the advertisements in the sample, but in 40% of the Breakfast Food advertisements. Promotions This was found to involve contests and free prizes, and was seen exclusively in terms of Breakfast Food sales. Indeed, this sale technique comprised 75% of the total Breakfast Food promotions, which included toys, games and competition entry. Pleasing Product Associations This was found to be the primary buying rationale in just 10% of the advertisements overall, but in 80% of the Meal Food commercials. The associations generally consisted of identification with cute, animated, anthropomorphic characters. Personal Advancement This technique often made claims that the product would improve strength, health or appearance and only figured in 1% of the (Breakfast Food) advertisements in the sample, making it the least used selling tactic in this instance. Characterisation Doolittle and Pepper divided the use of characterisation into a number of sub-categories, so as to account for all the figures that appeared in the sample. Characterisation involving Children It was found that about 75% of the advertisements in the sample featured children. However, they were presented as major characters in only 6% of the sample. It was found that some product categories featured children rather more than others. For example, children were often major characters in advertisements for Toys and Other Foods. They were features in 80% of the Meal Food advertisements, in 75% of Snack and 60% of Breakfast Food advertisements. Characterisation involving Teenagers This was found to be the age-group featured least in the sample, since teenagers only appeared in 6% of the advertisements. Characterisation involving Adults Adults were featured in over half of the advertisements, with 75% involving a major role contribution. All the Snack Food advertisements included adult characterisation, with 80% of Meal Food advertisements also showing adults. They were once more featured in 60% of the advertisements for Breakfast Foods and Sweets. Characterisation involving Sex Doolittle and Pepper selected four dimensions in the presentation of sex, as follows: 1. product usage as shown in the advertisement; 2. product presentation dominance (such as participation in a group activity); 3. authority exercised (problem solving and control-taking); 4. announcer identity (male or female). The study identified the dominance of one sex using the product in 11% of the advertisements in the sample, 94% of which were male dominated. Males also dominated in 94% of the Breakfast Food advertisements. In fact, 91% of those advertisements in which the voice type was clearly audible used a male voice-over. Females were seen to dominate only in advertisements for Toys and those products classed as 'girl-oriented'. This is contrary to my own study, in which the male voice is seen to dominate in advertisements for toys. Characterisation involving Minorities In this sample, minority characters featured in just 20% of the advertisements (p. 138) Anthropomorphic Characters These characters were used in over half of the advertisements. The main types of product to employ this form of characterisation were Foods and Sweets, and they usually took the form of animals or fantasy characters (p.139). Ambience Story-lines in the advertisements in this sample were most commonly unfolded in the situational sense. The overall perspective of more than half the advertisements was realistic or non-fictional. Interestingly, all the toy advertisements in this sample used a realistic perspective, which is rather unusual when one considers that toys generally encourage a degree of fantasy-play. Doolittle and Pepper coded the level of mood as being either 'light', 'serious' or 'neutral', and it was no surprise for them to discover that the prevailing mood was 'light' (83%) (p. 140). In the final part of the article, Doolittle and Pepper discussed the significance of their findings. They found that significance had less to do with product related issues, but rather more with the presentation and stereotyping of characters. Overall, no evidence seemed to have emerge to show that the world of television advertising is making any real efforts towards reflecting a society in which the sexes are equal. The authors conclude that sex-stereotyping appears to be increasing. In 1971, when Winick conducted extensive research in the field, males were found to dominate in 72% of situations. In this present study, male dominance appeared in 85% of the advertisements. The authors found that there was either no sexual dominance or total male dominance. What the authors emphasise after their own study of content and form is a further need to explore the effects that these techniques have on the commercial audience, and this is what I hope to achieve through my own research in the field.