There’s a funny scene in a recent episode of NBC’s sitcom “My Name Is Earl” that reminds me a lot of our students. Earl and his buffoonish younger brother, Randy, are in the motel room where they live when a young teenage boy Earl has befriended shows up and announces his intention to move in with the guys, because he believes Earl cares about him more than his own rich-yet-detached father.

Before long, a SWAT team shows up to rescue the boy, believing that Earl has kidnapped him and is holding him hostage for ransom. While Earl is standing in the motel room persuading the boy to go home, he asks Randy why he keeps touching his back. “I’m trying to catch the cute little red dot that’s moving around on your back,” says Randy.

Like Earl, our students have become targets — but not for SWAT-team guns. It’s advertisers that are targeting kids, spending over $2,200 a year per household in an effort to sell everything imaginable. There are five main reasons advertisers target kids.

First, there are lots of them. Forty years ago, there were roughly 18 million teenagers living in the United States. Today, that number has jumped to 33 million. More teens means more money.

Second, they’ve got amazing spending power. Advertisers know teens have over $200 billion a year in direct discretionary spending power. This is money they use
to buy “whatever I want to buy.”

Third, they influence another $278 billion in spending a year. Did you know that 65 percent of the car purchases made by parents are influenced by kids? Marketers do.

Fourth, marketers want to develop brand loyalty and believe that if they get kids now, they will have them for life. If a child develops loyalty to a brand while he or she is young, purchases and influence on others’ purchasing decisions will be worth $100,000 to that brand over the course of his or her lifetime.

Finally, marketers know that kids are easily influenced because of where they are developmentally. Lacking the wisdom and experience of adults, kids are more susceptible to emotional marketing appeals — and more impulsive when it  comes time to make decisions. Marketing guru James McNeal says in his book Kids as Customers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children, “Kids are the most unsophisticated of all consumers; they have the least and therefore want the most. Consequently, they are in a perfect position to be taken.”

Mastering Marketing

Marketing isn’t inherently evil. Like everything else in God’s world, it’s not the “thing” but how the “thing” is used that leads it to promote either the things of the Kingdom of God or the things of the kingdom of the world, the flesh and the devil. On the plus side, marketing provides us with information about all the different products (some of which are necessities) and purchasing options that exist.

On the other hand, marketing is a serious matter that we must address in our youth ministries because of how it functions in our students’ lives, how it shapes their worldviews and lifestyles, and how it has become a deeply spiritual issue by fostering and feeding idolatry.

As youth workers, we can help students interact “Christianly” and biblically with the ever-present and powerful world of marketing by doing the following three things.

1) Teach that marketing and the consumerism it promotes are deeply spiritual issues.
Kids need to see that God cares about every minute nook and cranny of life, including who we are, who we hope to be, how we spend our money and the goals
we pursue. Our faith can’t be separated from the false gospels promoted by marketing, which exploit the universal human hunger for God by promising redemption and fulfillment through the acquisition and use of products. In the long run, ads not only sell product, but they sell a worldview, shaping the beliefs that drive our behaviors and how we live our lives in God’s world.

I’ve learned that biblical history, world history and even my own personal history point to the fact that we humans are easily swayed. How quick we are to resort to worshiping those “other gods” rather than the One who made us to worship Him and Him alone. Sadly, marketing feeds a non-stop parade of promises made that we so effortlessly believe — but they’re promises that can’t ever be kept.

2) Help students to recognize where and how they are being marketed to.
A 2004 survey of professionals involved in marketing to kids found that 91 percent agreed with this statement: “Young people are being marketed to in ways they don’t even notice.” Those of us in youth ministry can help kids to integrate their faith into all of life by helping them discover and recognize how marketing functions to foster and feed their idolatry.

The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 instructs parents to teach the faith to their children by talking and walking the faith in all of their comings and goings. Youth ministry is filled with times of coming and going that we can use to point out some of the thousands of marketing messages people see every day.

Whenever you are with your students you can point out advertisements and explore their marketing strategies and messages. In all your comings and goings with kids, tell them when, where and how they’re being marketed to.

3) Show students how to process advertising and marketing from a Christian perspective.
Like all life skills, this is one that needs to be modeled, taught and practiced deliberately. But once teens start doing it, it becomes like riding a bike. Every time they see an ad for the rest of their lives, processing that ad will become second nature.

Getting Started

Ask your students to bring their favorite magazines, videos tapes of their favorite shows, and even their favorite movies into your youth group setting. Focus on the ads in the magazines, commercial breaks during the shows, and product placements in the films. Then talk about the ads you’ve found by processing them thoughtfully and biblically by asking seven simple, filtering questions:

• What product is this ad selling?
• What, besides the product, does this ad sell? (ideas, lifestyle, worldview, behaviors, etc.)
• What’s the bait, hook and promise in this ad?
• Complete this sentence: “This ad tells me to use______________ [the name of the product] and  ____________ [the result the ad promises].
• Does the ad tell the truth? What truth? How?
• Does the ad tell a lie? What lie? How?
• How does this ad and its messages agree or disagree with God’s truth, and what does that mean for me?

Simple activities like these can help our kids both see “the little red dot” targeted on their backs and “hit the floor” so they won’t get “shot.” Our goal should be to get them out of the marketers’ bull’s-eye and into the footsteps of Jesus.

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Walt Mueller is the founder and president of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (www.cpyu.org). He is the author of several books, including Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture: Bridging Teen Worldviews and Christian Truth and Understanding Today’s Youth Culture.