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Follow the Children! Advergames and the Enactment of Children’s Consumer Identity

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Minding Minors Wandering the Web: Regulating Online Child Safety

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 24))

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Abstract

One of the ways market practitioners connect with children, is by using online casual or mini-games, specially developed around a particular brand or product. In order to demonstrate how these so-called advergames aid in achieving a range of corporate objectives which go beyond advertising as such, and to address some of the sensitivities underlying this strategy, a popular Dutch advergame targeted at children is analysed in this chapter. Using insights from social studies of science and technology and surveillance studies, we argue that the ‘fairness question’ regarding contemporary marketing communication formats such as advergames, cannot be adequately dealt with without accounting for these formats themselves, nor for the interplay of design, strategies, practices, knowledge, human and non-human actors within a network of relations configuring these formats. In addition, we claim that market practitioners defend their practices by referring to images and conceptions of children as desiring and competent consumers which, we argue, are partly produced by the very practices they try to legitimise.

Isolde Sprenkels is a PhD researcher with the ERC funded DigIDeas project: Social and Ethical Aspects of Digital Identities. Towards a Value Sensitive Identity Management. This chapter is part of Isolde Sprenkel’s dissertation. It features not only a study of multidisciplinary literature on children, advertising, new media and consumption, but it also has its base in the empirical research conducted for the aforementioned research project such as interviews with Dutch market practitioners and observations at marketing conferences.

Irma van der Ploeg is an Associate Professor Infonomics and New Media at Zuyd University in The Netherlands, and principal investigator with the ERC funded DigIDeas project: Social and Ethical Aspects of Digital Identities. Towards a Value Sensitive Identity Management: www.digideas.com.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Daniel Cook defines the term market practitioners as “marketers, researchers, designers, manufacturers, and other market actors” as market practitioners; Cook 2011, p. 258.

  2. 2.

    Chung and Grimes 2005; Steeves 2007.

  3. 3.

    There are different understandings of what advergames are. Within this chapter we consider advergames to be online casual or mini-games specially developed around a particular brand or product. We consider them to be a particular form of gamevertising; with gamevertising in general being the promotional or advertising possibilities before, within or after an often already existing console, pc, or internet game; Hufen 2010.

  4. 4.

    In Dutch: OLA ‘Water Spelen’.

  5. 5.

    OLA is the name under which the ‘Heartbrand’ operates in the Netherlands. The ice cream brand with the double lined red heart-shaped logo, is one of the food brands offered by multinational consumer goods company Unilever. Nickelodeon is a market-leading television channel for children, owned by Viacom International Media Networks Northern Europe.

  6. 6.

    De Goeij and Kwantes 2009.

  7. 7.

    In Dutch ‘OLA IJstijd’.

  8. 8.

    The Dutch website is offline at time of finishing this chapter. Though the Belgian one is similar and online: www.olakids.be.

  9. 9.

    Houben 2009.

  10. 10.

    OLA 2009.

  11. 11.

    Professor ‘De Vries’ in Dutch, which is actually a very common name in the Netherlands.

  12. 12.

    OLAIJstijd 2010.

  13. 13.

    MTV Networks 2009.

  14. 14.

    Entertaining (cartoon) characters are often used in marketing campaigns to help sell a product, service or brand. Think of the Ronald McDonald character selling the McDonalds brand; Calvert 2008.

  15. 15.

    Steeves 2006.

  16. 16.

    OLA 2009.

  17. 17.

    Grimes and Shade 2005.

  18. 18.

    Steeves 2006.

  19. 19.

    Gurău 2008.

  20. 20.

    Moore 2004.

  21. 21.

    Moore 2004.

  22. 22.

    Gurău 2008.

  23. 23.

    Dow Schull 2005.

  24. 24.

    Moore 2004; Grimes 2008.

  25. 25.

    Gurău 2008.

  26. 26.

    Grimes 2008; Chung and Grimes 2005.

  27. 27.

    Dow Schull 2005.

  28. 28.

    OLAIJstijd 2010.

  29. 29.

    Livingstone 2009a, p. 170.

  30. 30.

    Nairn and Fine 2008.

  31. 31.

    Lunt and Livingstone 2012, p. 147.

  32. 32.

    Although, as David Buckingham explains, some studies suggest that this understanding is not necessarily used. He claims differences in these estimations are a consequence of research method; Buckingham 2009.

  33. 33.

    Livingstone 2009a.

  34. 34.

    Advertising effects can be intended by advertisers, such as brand awareness and buying intent, and non-intended, such as materialism and family conflicts; Valkenburg 2002, p. 140. In this chapter we call intended effects by advertisers ‘goals’.

  35. 35.

    Livingstone and Helsper 2006.

  36. 36.

    Livingstone and Helsper 2006.

  37. 37.

    Here Livingstone and Helsper are inspired by Petty & Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion which distinguishes two routes of persuasion, a central one and the peripheral one; Livingstone and Helsper 2006.

  38. 38.

    Moore 2004.

  39. 39.

    Livingstone 2009a.

  40. 40.

    Livingstone 2009a, p. 172.

  41. 41.

    Nairn and Fine 2008.

  42. 42.

    Fielder et al. 2007; Moore 2004; Nairn and Fine 2008.

  43. 43.

    Friestad and Wright 1994.

  44. 44.

    Cook 2011.

  45. 45.

    Livingstone 2009a, p. 172.

  46. 46.

    Livingstone 2009a.

  47. 47.

    Nairn and Fine 2008; Rozendaal et al. 2011.

  48. 48.

    The analytic symmetry between the social and material, between humans and non-humans, actors within and constituting networks, is part of a research approach or method called Actor Network Theory (ANT), originally developed by Bruno Latour (Latour 1987, 1991) and Michel Callon (Callon 1986). The title of this chapter refers to the ANT dictum to ‘follow the actors’ as well, describing and following any actor expressing itself when describing a network or relations.

  49. 49.

    Livingstone 2009b, p. 195.

  50. 50.

    Steve Woolgar “suggested that how users ‘read’ machines are constrained because the design and the production of machines entails a process of configuring the user” (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005, p. 8), which means that both user and possible actions of the user are constructed in the design process.

  51. 51.

    Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005, p. 7.

  52. 52.

    Akrich and Latour 1992.

  53. 53.

    Their notion of ‘script’ has its origins in ANT which is described in footnote 5. “Like a film script, technical objects define a framework of action together with the space of actors and the space in which they are supposed to act”; Akrich 1992, p. 208. “Technical objects participate in building heterogeneous networks that bring together actants of all types and sizes, whether humans of nonhumans”; Akrich 1992, p. 206.

  54. 54.

    Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005.

  55. 55.

    Edery 2009.

  56. 56.

    Cook 2011.

  57. 57.

    Isolde Sprenkels analyse the way in which market practitioners’ research methods can be understood in a performative manner in her forthcoming dissertation, i.e. their research methods do not just represent a reality out there, but constitute or perform reality into being; Law 2009.

  58. 58.

    Cook 2011.

  59. 59.

    Nederlandse Reclame Code.

  60. 60.

    Fielder et al. 2007.

  61. 61.

    Moore 2004.

  62. 62.

    Buckingham 2007.

  63. 63.

    Helsper and Enyon 2010; Bennet et al. 2008.

  64. 64.

    Reintjes 2009.

  65. 65.

    Jansen 2009.

  66. 66.

    Elmer 2004; Perri6 2005; Pridmore 2012.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant no. 201853.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zuyd University, Limburg, The Netherlands

    Isolde Sprenkels

  2. Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Irma van der Ploeg

Authors
  1. Isolde Sprenkels
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Correspondence to Isolde Sprenkels .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. eLaw – Center for law in the information society, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Simone van der Hof

  2. eLaw – Center for law in the information, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Bibi van den Berg

  3. Faculty of Law eLaw – Centre for Law in the Information, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Bart Schermer

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Sprenkels, I., van der Ploeg, I. (2014). Follow the Children! Advergames and the Enactment of Children’s Consumer Identity. In: van der Hof, S., van den Berg, B., Schermer, B. (eds) Minding Minors Wandering the Web: Regulating Online Child Safety. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 24. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-005-3_10

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