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Selling Violence to Children

November 2001

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—THE TRAGIC SHOOTINGS at Columbine High School and other campuses across the country brought renewed scrutiny to the link between youth violence and entertainment media. Then-President Bill Clinton commissioned a joint study by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate the marketing of violent entertainment products to youth. GSB assistant professor of marketing Sonya Grier served on the research team.

The investigators asked two key questions: Do film, music recording, and electronic game companies promote age-restricted products in places frequented by children? And do their ads target children and youth?

The answer was yes. "I don’t think that surprised people," says Grier, who as visiting scholar at the FTC conducted the study with a panel of legal, economics, and marketing experts. What was unexpected was that the evidence came from the entertainment marketers themselves. "It wasn’t as if we designed ways to try to infer what they were doing or subpoenaed information," says Grier. "The companies, at our request, submitted marketing plans that documented these practices."

The report, released by the FTC in September 2000, caught the entertainment industry red-handed. While each of the three industry segments used differing systems of self-regulation, individual companies were guilty of promoting to children the very products their industry segments deemed inappropriate for those under the stipulated age restriction.

"Eighty percent of the studied R-rated motion pictures, 100 percent of the studied explicit-content–labeled music, and 70 percent of the studied M-rated games were targeted to consumers under 17 years of age," says Grier in a spring 2001 academic paper about the report. In one instance, a video game marketing plan refers to the target market as "males 17–34 due to M rating" yet, parenthetically, "the true target is males 12–34."

The report not only casts serious doubts on the ability of the entertainment industry to regulate itself, but for Grier, whose research interests include target marketing, it also documents the use of some shadowy practices. "Intentionally or not, they used a lot of marketing strategies and tactics that could be described as undercover—for example, street marketing that can’t be measured," says Grier. She adds that most parents probably are not aware that their children could, say, receive a flier for an age-restricted movie at a Brownie or Cub Scout meeting.

Add to that the blurring of the lines between entertainment and advertising and the increasing crossover of content between industry segments, and there is little wonder that parents are frustrated at their eroding control over the inappropriate material to which their children are exposed.

Compounding the issue is the entertainment industry’s First Amendment shield against government regulation of content. Unlike tobacco and alcohol sales to minors, which have legal implications, regulations governing the sale of age-restricted electronic games, movie tickets, and music recordings to kids have no teeth.

While the FTC report did not enter into the debate about causes and effects of media violence, it did review existing scientific research on the subject, finding that a correlation exists between exposure to media violence and aggressive and sometimes violent behavior. The report also raised many questions about target marketing that warrant future in-depth investigation.

In April, the FTC issued what amounts to a six-month report card on the entertainment industry’s progress in bringing its marketing practices more closely in line with its self-made regulations. The results are encouraging. Both the motion picture and electronic games industries have taken steps to address the issue; however, the music industry has done nothing.

"With the least comprehensive rating system of the three industries, the Recording Industry Association of America has been very adamant that it’s impossible to rate music and words in the same way that you can rate video games. It’s complex," says Grier. "Part of the difficulty is the development of music as an inside language, where there could be a million words used to mean guns or sex, and outsiders like parents will never know what that song is really saying to their kids."

The FTC is expected to release a more detailed report on the industry’s progress toward effective self-regulation. In the meantime, FTC officials suggest that the key to consumer protection against inappropriate media exposure is consumer education.

—by Helen K. Chang

Related Information

When Is Honesty The Best Policy? The Effect Of Stated Company Intent On Consumer Skepticism, Sonya Grier, Mark Forehand, GSB Research Report # 1665, 2002

Consumer Distinctiveness and Advertising Persuasion, Sonya Grier, Anne Brumbaugh, GSB Research Report #1735, 2002

Ibid. A Six-Month Follow-Up Review, FTC Report to Congress, April 24, 2001 ( http://www.ftc.gov/reports/violence/violence010423.pdf)

The Federal Trade Commission’s Report on the Marketing of Violent Entertainment to Youths: Developing Policy-Tuned Research, Sonya A. Grier, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 20 (1), Spring 2001

The Federal Trade Commission’s Report on the Marketing of Violent Entertainment to Youths: Developing Policy-Tuned Research, Sonya A. Grier, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing (Vol. 20, No. 1), Spring 2001

Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review of Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries: A Report of the Federal Trade Commission, Robert Pitofsky, Chairman, September 11, 2000 ( http://www.ftc.gov/reports/violence/vioreport.pdf)

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