The Big Five That Control Everything

From watching The Merchants of Cool we heard a lot of concerning things. One of them was hearing that the there are five companies that have a lot of smaller companies that they own. Another concerning thing was that they market what the teen wants. One final thing I would like to focus on is that they outright said that they do not care the standard of the ad decreases as long as it is effective.

Let's focus on those five companies. They were Disney, Time Warner, News Corp, Universal Vivendi, and Viacom. Let me give you a summary of all of these companies. Disney has the greatest net worth with 55 billion dollars. They have Pixar, ESPN, and Marvel just to name a few. Time Warner is 28 billion dollars, with HBO, CW, and Warner Bros. News Corp is 33 billion with 21st Century Fox, 20th Century Fox, as well as many more. Universal Vivendi 697 million Euros, with Gameloft and Universal Music Group to name a few. Viacom is at 1.3 billion dollars with Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures as few of their companies. All of these companies have a move producer, they have at least one television company, and some have music and animation companies. The bottom line all of these companies have access to all of our forms of media, and they have the ability to control what we get. As I brought up before they also are in charge of marketing all of these products which is crazy. Just five companies controlling all of them media we consume and the marketing we see. That's concerning. Should we be afraid? Yes. That means we bend to their will.

They said that they market what the teen wants. As I said before they also do not know what teens want. They do all of this research and in the end, I do not even know where they get the idea that this is what teens want. The brought up teens are consumed with sex, but in reality most are not. Their research has led them away from what teens want. So, they do not even market want teens actually want. Second they do not care about ethics. They will not stop at anything in order to market what they want. They are not concerned with what they are doing is right or wrong. They do not stop to think about if what these teens want is actually a good thing. They just give them what they want, when they want it without thinking about the consequences of their actions. We are supposed to guide teens, not let them guide themselves because that will end in disaster. Shouldn't they care about what teens want and be the guardian when it comes to marketing and advertising. They should be that line of defense, not just the parents, and we cannot trust teens.

Finally, they outright said they do not mind lowering standards as long as they get the message across to their audience. That is not how it works. When you lower your standards, you are telling teenagers that the ends justify the means. That is not a message they should be sending. Lowering your standards just to get a message across is wrong. We still need to keep our standards, and still accomplish our goals. They cannot sacrifice standards just to make money, but I guess that is what everyone is okay with. That is what people do, and I guess even when it comes to teens, who have a very impressionable mind, it does not matter either even though we say it does.

Marketers need to rethink their strategy because what they are doing is wrong, but I guess it does not matter as long as they keep pulling in money.

An article about the ethics of marketing to children.
http://business-ethics.com/2011/05/31/1441-marketing-to-children-accepting-responsibility/

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