Mischievous marketing to children.

A few days ago, my son Fintan, 8, asked a question that made me wonder at the deviousness of marketers.

“Do Smarties make you smarter?”, he asked, most innocently. He seemed quite prepared to believe that they did.

“No, Fintan, it is just a name.”

He didn’t seem entirely satisfied with that. I intuited his unspoken thoughts as being along the lines of: “If they don’t make you smarter, why call them that, then?”

This little exchange drove me to ponder the freedoms we give marketers: they are allowed to call their products anything at all – yet, sometimes, they don’t seem to use this freedom honestly. Fintan was right. There IS the suggestion in the name “Smarties”, that the product is connected, somehow, to smartness. It IS a fair and quite reasonable step to infer, as Fintan had, that the product must be so called, because, somehow, it induced “smartness”. Indeed, perhaps that is exactly the reason they were named “Smarties” in the first place. Perhaps, they wanted children, all over the world, to associate their product with smartness and consume them, therefore, in increased numbers, motivated by the illusion that they were going to enjoy positive cognitive change.

Children and unintelligent adults are susceptible to manipulation through the naming and marketing of products. It would seem wise, to me, to place safeguards on the naming of products so that false associations and inferences are not attached to products, for the purpose of increasing sales to vulnerable groups. Fintan is a bright child. He is socially very switched on. Yet, his conclusion when faced with a product named: “Smarties”, is that they must induce smartness – for why else call them that? How many other children, around the world have the same, perhaps unvoiced thought? How many of them UNCONSCIOUSLY make that link and are motivated to buy them? It is a somewhat disturbing thought. In a way, there is something unethical about naming a product with a reference to a property it doesn’t have, creating an association it cannot fulfil. Smarties don’t make you smart – but they might make you fat, or your teeth rot, if overly consumed. That would be a fair set of truer associations to link to the product, than “they make you smart”.

The funny thing is, that, until Fintan pointed it out, I had never reflected on the implications of the name “Smarties”. Sometimes, children are quicker to see the broader truths of things, in their world, than we are. Perhaps that is because they are thinking about them for the first time, and trying to find meaning in them – whereas adults, in some ways, have lost that habit, to some extent.

Thank you, Fintan, for your question. Smarties won’t make you smarter – but perhaps thinking about them will.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The hunter and the hunted.

A 39 year old American has been killed by a grizzly bear he was hunting. Steve Stevenson was mauled to death by the bear, after his fellow hunter, Ty Bell, had shot and injured it. They had tracked the wounded bear, but it seems that the bear found Stevenson first. It is notable that Ty Bell first shot the grizzly – a threatened species in that part of America, with only 30 surviving in the mountain forests of North Eastern Idaho and North Western Montana – having mistaken it for a black bear. After Stevenson had been killed, Ty Bell shot the bear multiple times and killed it.

Now, what struck me about this situation is my reaction to it. I have no sympathy at all for the dead hunter. The reason for this should be clear: Steve Stevenson has the moral status of a murderer. I am not saying that a grizzly bear is equivalent to a human – but I am saying that a grizzly bear is entitled to the right to live, without some dumb American (and they were dumb, because they were unable to distinguish a grizzly bear from a black bear – and because grizzlies are known to kill humans, if wounded...so they were even dumber to follow it after first shooting it) coming along and killing it. The right to life should be extended to all higher animals in our environment. It should be seen as essentially immoral – and, one hopes, illegal - to go hunting for wildlife. I can see no benefit, to the world, to life or even to humans, in hunting. Indeed, the only outcome of hunting is the endangerment of our fellow species and the immediate murder of individual members of them. Hunting is, if you pause to reflect on it, an abhorrent “sport”.

In a way, there is little to distinguish hunters from serial killers – the only difference is the species they target. I would not be surprised if it were much the same impulse that drives both types of people: the thrill of the kill. A hunter exults in killing other animals - often quite beautiful and special animals, which should be protected, not murdered. Steve Stevenson is dead, however, I do not believe he should be mourned, or missed – because he chose to live his life as a killer, of higher life forms, for sport. He saw fun in chasing down an innocent animal, who would otherwise, most probably, never harm a human, and killing it. Instead, however, the grizzly bear killed him. This, interestingly, does not make the bear a killer – for the bear acted in self-defence. If one considered the bear as equivalent in moral status and reasoning as a human, the bear would be seen as morally the higher being – and legally innocent of any crime.

Once upon a time, hunting was the means by which man secured food, for himself and his family. In such times, hunting was understandable and to be accepted. Now, however, hunting has transformed into a thrill for a certain type of adrenalin junkie – the more sadistic ones. Hunting has become the means by which those who find fulfilment in killing, have a real world outlet for their impulses. It is curious to me, that such behaviour is not seen as aberrant, for it could not be more so. How can someone exult in the murder of a fellow animal? It is a savagery I cannot accept. What is especially galling about this particular case, is that the victim of this hunt – the grizzly bear – is from a threatened species and should most definitely not be hunted.

Upon Steve Stevenson’s death, bear experts spoke of the need for programs to teach hunters how to distinguish black bears from grizzly bears. The implication of this, of course, is that it is OK to kill black bears. To my mind, these “bear experts” have completely missed the point. Bears should not be being hunted, at all: no higher animal should. These “bear experts” should be calling not for training for hunters – but for hunting to be banned altogether – indeed, I think hunting, except for food, in times when there is no alternative, should be criminalized, all the world over. Our world is not just for humans – it is for all that lives – and we humans should make room on this planet for all the other life forms that do not immediately threaten our own existence.

I have a mischievous, but curiously appropriate thought. If these hunters like hunting so much and have such a great desire to kill something...why don’t they hunt each other? The problem of hunting would soon go away – and all the world’s wildlife would be much the better for it.

Incidentally, Ty Bell should be prosecuted for killing the grizzly bear, since its hunting is illegal in the Lower 48, in the USA. It is only legal to kill grizzlies if human life is endangered - and before he shot the bear in the first place, that was not so. So, I hope to see Ty Bell jailed, for his crime against a fellow animal.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)