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

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Daniel Tammet and the art of exaggeration.

Daniel Tammet is an unusual young man. He is an autistic savant with particular gifts in number, language and memory for same. However, I am struck by the exaggeration that creeps, at times, into his marketing.

Today, on Yahoo, there was a link to a video on Daniel Tammet. The write up beneath the video said Tammet could "memorize 22,000 digits in a single sitting."

No. He can't. In fact, if you have ever read interviews with him, he has spoken of the "weeks" he spent in "sessions" memorizing "great chunks" of pi. This is not the work of a single sitting, but the work of quite some time, spread over quite some time. Nevertheless, it is impressive...so why the need to exaggerate it, until it becomes something legendary?

Daniel Tammet has a good memory. That is not in dispute. Few people have a memory as retentive as his. However, he does not have a perfect memory. Nor is it able to absorb vast information in one instant - as the Yahoo site would have us believe. Were it, in fact, so that he could memorize 22,000 digits of pi in one sitting, then it defies belief that he should stop at that, which is not, after all, a world record. He would have gone on to best the world record, were the memorization of pi so easy for him. He did not, because he could not. There were limits to his memory, to his diligence, to his patience, to his ability - in fact, that limit was 22,514 digits. That, for him, was enough. It took some effort, over a not inconsequential time - and he must have thought, after that time, that it was effort enough.

Kim Peek, on the other hand, could, perhaps, have memorized 22,000 digits of pi in one sitting. He, after all, could memorize entire books at a rapid reading. So, I am not saying that there are not people who could, possibly, ingest such a huge list of numbers in a short time. History has known, perhaps, a few of them. However, Daniel Tammet, from his own words, is not one of them. However, I do note that he tends to change his words and timescales, sometimes, when speaking of his feats. He is sometimes contradicted by his own written works. Make of that what you will. Perhaps he just doesn't remember what he wrote before!

So, please, those who are writing of Daniel Tammet, stick to the unusual facts. They are more than unusual enough. There is no need to go beyond them, and turn them into something both fictional and legendary. There is no need to make a comic book character out of Daniel Tammet's life. He is distinctive enough, without such fictionalizing.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
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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.

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

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

Breeding a nation of chronic gamblers.

The "Integrated Resorts" are coming and with them, the temptations of casinos. Many, in the media, seem to look upon this prospect with great anticipation - but shall the opening of grand casinos in Singapore lead to more problems than they are worth?

Yesterday, I saw some evidence that Singapore might be in for troubles it is really unprepared for. I was shopping with my middle son, Fintan, five, in Toys R Us, to get an idea of what he might like for Christmas. While we browsed through the brightly coloured offerings, I noted something unexpected: a toy casino.

I looked on this box with some shock. It contained a roulette wheel and some card based games (the box proclaimed that there were four casino games contained within). What on Earth was a home casino doing in a toy shop?

It seems that either no-one has considered the effect of offering casino toys in a children's shop - or that someone has considered it and thought it a great idea for breeding life's addicted gamblers.

I noted that on the box was a little white sticker which had been affixed, perhaps in Singapore itself (it wasn't part of the box normally) with the symbols: "18+" on it. Now, that seems like nothing more than a cop-out - because how many over 18s (apart from parents) actually shop in Toys R Us? It is primarily a shop for little kids - and the majority of people who would see the casinos on offer would be little kids.

What would happen to any family that bought such a game? Well, two things: the kids would learn how to play casino games - and they would also learn the excitement of gambling. There is also something that they would not learn: that gambling can be very harmful to one's life and well-being, bringing with it, the certainty, in the long-run, of financial ruin. No gambler, apart from those of peculiar gift at card games, perhaps, can ever expect to win, long-term: everyone loses - and the longer you play, the more you will lose.

So, these casino games will breed future gamblers. The kids who have so much fun playing with their "casino" as a child, are very likely to grow up to be adults who think that they are equipped to play in the real casino with their hard-earned salaries. Indeed, if they have a lot of fun at home, playing the casino games, they may even make it a bit of an obsession and become life-long, hardcore gamblers. You see, once the excitement of gambling is felt, by some people, there is no turning back - they are addicted to the thrill of these games. Not everyone is like that. However, if enough young children get to play these casino games, it is certain that many of these natural gambling addicts will encounter the games, and become ensnared on the thrills of gambling. Such children will grow up to be adults with poor life outcomes.

I understand that Singapore's government is anxious to find sources of revenue - but sometimes some sources are just not worth the hassle they will bring.

The advent of the IRs may bring much more than additional tax revenue to the State - it may also lead to many thousands of Singaporeans ruining their lives through the consequences of gambling addiction.

I think casino games should be banned from the shop shelves. No child should be entrained into a world of gambling. There are many more fruitful lessons they could learn, than the excitements of the roulette wheel or the blackjack table. Indeed, it gave me a little shudder to see that casino game on sale in a famous children's toy shop. There seems such cynicism in marketing such a "game" in such a location - for it is sure, given the demographic of people who go to such a store, that the primary people on behalf of whom it is purchased, will be kids a lot younger than 18.

Save the kids: ban the casino games.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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