![]() “When you harness children’s pester power, it could be questionable because there are many parents who can’t really afford to keep buying stuff for their kids,’’ he says. Also, such ads, by raising children’s aspirational levels, are changing their value systems—today, kids are beginning to believe that success is about what you have, not about what you are or what you achieve.’’Īdman Prahlad Kakkar agrees that some advertisements are “a grey area’’. “Children are far more sensitive to peer pressure than adults, and the sense of shame they feel when they don’t have something their friends do can really damage their psyche. ![]() To what extent do such advertisements affect children? “Tremendously,’’ says psychiatrist Dayal Mirchandani. It’s an unabashed attempt to change the once-aweek hair-washing habit of Indians by insidiously making children insecure— and never mind that daily hair-washing is bad for the scalp.’’ According to Ms Sivadas, the sales of the shampoo have subsequently gone through the roof. “The weeping child asks her mother why she can’t wash her hair thrice a week,’’ she says, “after which the mother produces this shampoo saying, ‘Now you can wash your hair everyday’. ![]() Akhila Sivadas, executive director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Advocacy and Research, points to a shampoo advertisement in which a little girl, taunted by peers for her unruly hair, runs to her mother who solves the ‘problem’ with the said shampoo. As the economic muscle and ‘pester power’ of the post-liberalisation generation spirals, advertisers are leaping on to the bandwagon, protesting activists be damned. Toys, foodstuff, beauty products, consumer durables, even items like luxury cars— name it and there’ll be a child either hawking it or being targeted. “I believe,’’ he once said in an op-ed in the Toronto Globe & Mail, “that it’s wrong to use one’s popularity to sell products to a vulnerable audience.’’ That kind of sentiment is conspicuous by its absence in India where aggressive marketing to children is on a perilously upward curve. MUMBAI: Raffi Cavoukian, a Canadian composer-singer who specialises in music for children, has for 20-odd years consistently turned down offers to do commercial endorsements.
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