Ad Paper
...se it was presumed that kids lacking credit cards would be enough to keep a lid on on-line sales to kids and teenagers. However, it is sad to say that that is not the story. “Parents can now open on-line accounts for their children at sites that cater to a crowd too young for plastic”(Lowy). Aside from on-line shopping, kids who spend their free time on the internet are lured into a brand name manufacture’s web site by arcade games, sweepstakes and prizes. The internet has now become much more than an educational resource it might have been designed as. However, it is not simply the ad hosts such as television and the internet that raises parent’s concerns it is, more specifically, the types of ads that worry parents. “Alcohol manufacturers use a variety of unscrupulous techniques to advertise alcoholic beverages to children” (Alcohol). Anheuser-Busch Co. is the world’s largest brewer and is known for using child-enticing images such as frogs, dogs, penguins and lizards in their ads for Budweiser beer. The use of animals, cartoons, humor, music, athletics, and themes of belonging and friendship in beer advertising catches the fancy of young people everyday. “Alcohol marketers say they have voluntary standards that prevent them from targeting consumers younger than the legal purchase age” (Hacker). They also claim to avoid ad placements that reach an audience that is primarily underage. Yet, when one becomes twenty-one he or she becomes a valuable alcohol consumer and legitimate targets for promotions to drink. The sad truth is that teens are also in industry’s cross-hairs; whether or not they are intended targets is debatable. In the end it is all the same. “Millions of underage persons regularly absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising for booze” (Hacker). The total beer advertising expenditures in 1999 for ads in magazines, newspapers, on TV, and outdoors was about 800 million doll...