Crave

Together with Danielle O’Shea and Pandelis Plousi our major group
project was Crave.

The marketing and advertising industry is a multi-billion-dollar
industry that has the power to change the world, but is it changing
the world for the better? Australia recently ranked number two in
the world for overweight concerns among children, which proves
that the messages that food advertisers are communicating, in
many instances, are misleading, or are not necessarily in the publics
best interest and are being misinterpreted. Studies conducted by
the American Psychological Association in 2004, concluded that
most children younger than 8 years old do not have the critical
thinking skills to understand the persuasive intent of TV. A large
percentage of food advertisements are promoting products that can
best be described as fatty, salty, sugary and fast (Australian Council
on Children and the Media, April 2008). The problem is that much
more money is spent on advertising ‘unhealthy’ food than what is
spent on fixing the health problems that this food is causing.

Crave endeavours to:
+ Make people aware of the affect
advertising has on us as individual consumers.
+ Decrease the negative impacts that consumerism
has on society – particularly health aspects.
+ Educate society of how advertising strategies are
created to manipulate ones ethos.
+ Help consumers discover the knowledge to decipher
between advertising and information.
+ Help parents to find ways around advertising and the power
it has in particularly when it come to food and their children.

Click here to visit the crave blog