It was supposed to be an emotionally moving, reality-TV moment, but it didn’t go entirely as planned. Thirteen-year-old Jennifer Schofield’s room was getting a complete makeover, thanks to the folks at “Trading Spaces Kids,” a cable TV spin-off of the popular “Trading Spaces” show for adults.

Even after designers had lavished a thousand dollars on remaking Jennifer’s room with sky-blue walls, hand-painted fluffy clouds, a spacious bed made out of a real wooden boat, a boardwalk, a cotton candy machine, a smoothie maker and a dart game, Jennifer wasn’t happy. She was crying, and these were not tears of joy. “I don’t think she likes it,” the show’s designer told a reporter from The Washington Post, who watched as the segment was filmed.

Minor disappointments like this haven’t stopped manufacturers, retailers and advertisers from targeting that multibillion dollar market consisting of teens, tweens, and other kids. Think of it as Martha Stewart meets Rugrats meets Madison Avenue.

You also may want to think of it as a form of “spiritual formation,” even though nobody calls it that. As a youth worker, you probably have an idea of what you’d like to achieve with your kids. Your plan may not always be totally thought-out or successfully executed, but you have an idea of what kind of people you’d like your kids to become.

Sellers are even more precise about what kinds of young people they like to create. For these corporate titans, it’s all about kids who live and breathe to consume. As shows such as “Trading Spaces Kids” reveal, there’s no shortage of consuming kids in North America today.

You can read about it in Susan Lynn’s disturbing new book Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood (New Press, $24.95). Lynn, a psychologist and child advocate, paints a frightening (but not overblown) portrait of a $15 billion industry that cares more about the financial bottom line than it does about what’s best for kids, their parents or our society.

Whether they package cartoons such as the Teletubbies as “educational programming,” load children’s breakfast cereal and snacks full of ungodly amounts of sugar, or intentionally teach kids how to nag adults into buying them new things, businesses have few qualms about transforming kids into consumers.

The assault on kids is a multi-faceted program that leaves no age group without its own unique products and come-ons.

Teens
Pottery Barn Teens, the teen-oriented division of the successful home products corporation, offers dozens of room packages in its glossy catalogs. The Instant Replay package for teen boys includes a Shadowbox Media Cabinet for junior’s electronic gadgets (a bargain at only $999) as well as complementing chairs, game tables, carpeting and wall decorations. With a bed, the complete room package would set mom and dad back more than $2,000. There are girls’ packages, too, complete with a wide range of color-coordinated accessories (chairs, curtains, sheets, blankets, towels, lamps, storage bins, etc.).

Kids
Pottery Barn Kids aims the same aggressive approach at younger consumers. “We’ve created the girl’s bedroom she’ll love for years to come,” says the effusive catalog text. A bed is never just something to sleep in; it’s a spiritual experience: “A canopy bed is every girl’s dream.” A playroom is never merely fun, but also “inspirational and practical.” Unlike the unfortunate episode of “Kids Trading Spaces” that featured Jennifer crying about her makeover, the boys and girls pictured throughout the PBKids catalog, in tastefully designed photo spreads, are uniformly ecstatic about their new rooms.

A recent book titled Branded: the Buying and Selling of Teenagers (Perseus, $25) explores the rationale behind the growing attention companies pay to consuming kids. As author Alissa Quart explains: “Companies…are attracted to teens and preteens spending money today, hooking them into a cycle of labor and shopping during their youth. Teen-oriented brands now aim to register so strongly in kids’ minds that the appeal will remain for life.”

In other words, kids who decorate their rooms with products and accessories from PBKids and PBTeen may, when they’re older, fill their own homes with products from Pottery Barn. At least that’s the plan.

Infants
The marketing gets more aggressive the older kids are, but it starts at the earliest ages imaginable. Most common are toy catalogs that try to make it sound like dollhouses or water slides pack an intellectual development component. At least that’s the angle pursued on the “toys to grow on” catalog (ttgo.com) and the “One Step Ahead” catalog from leapsandbounds.com, which claims that its products are “Helping Kids Grow, Laugh and Learn.”

The pressure to produce smart kids begins long before they even know what toys are. Last year saw the debut of a new breed of “super baby” infant formulas available from Abbot Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and other players in the $3 billion formula market. Most of the “super baby” formulas feature increased levels of fatty acids along with a combination of more than two dozen vitamins and minerals.

Manufacturers claim these souped-up baby formulas jump-start infant I.Q. and eyesight. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t agree with the companies’ claims that fatty acids achieve these ends, but it has permitted these claims to appear in the companies’ marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics has expressed concerns about “unknown adverse effects.”

Prenatal
I’m not making this up. Honest. Author Susan Linn devotes a portion of Consuming Kids to the increasing efforts marketers are making to target consumers before they’re even born. I won’t give you all the gory details of these emerging techniques, but you can rest assured the relentless quest for consumers won’t be halted by scientific limitations or quaint ethical concerns.

Those who study and write about marketing have long agreed that pop culture, including advertising and marketing, can have a profound impact on how children form their identities. That’s precisely why marketers target kids. They want young consumers to make products and corporations a central piece of who they are and what they buy.

Cultish Marketing
A new book takes the study of marketing even further. For those of you who dismissed the comments in this article comparing marketing to spiritual formation, take a look at a new book which argues that the means companies use to cultivate consumer loyalty are similar to the methods cults use to recruit adherents.
Douglas Atkin is a strategy director for a New York ad agency. In his spare time he’s written a book called The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers (Portfolio, $24.95).

Atkin argues that human beings are inherently spiritual. “Few stronger emotions exist than the need to belong and make meaning,” he writes. He then tries to draw a dotted line that compares the ways companies like eBay (the online shopping outlet), JetBlue (the airline) and the Marine Corps (you know who they are) do their marketing to the ways that groups like the Unification Church and the Landmark Forum attract believers.

The Culting of Brands is an intriguing book. You’ll have to decide on your own how well Atkin succeeds in making his case, but there’s no arguing about whether or not kids are being targeted by marketers. The only thing left to decide is whether or not you’re going to do anything in your work with young people to help them understand and protect themselves from these aggressive and destructive commercial assaults.