Cingular’s commercial on Channel One News. (taken from a middle school broadcast)
During December 2005, Cingular
Wireless ran their normal ads for wireless cell phone service and
for their pay-as-you-go GO phones. In addition, they ran commercial
in middle schools, as well as high schools, for the ROKR cell phone
that utilizes Apple’s iTunes software.
This phone cost $150.
Cingular and Verizon use Channel One News to create desire for
cell phones in the captive audience that ranges from age 18 to
10. A student forced to watch Channel One hears almost daily that
a cell phone is necessary to be accepted by your peers.
If you are in the 7th grade and you don’t have a Cingular or Verizon
cell phone, then your parents must be dirt poor or they don’t love
you. Take your pick.
Cingular knows few secondary school students have the allowance
to buy such a phone much less pay for the monthly service. That
is why this commercial was aired before Christmas. The whole point
in for students to nag their parents into buying this particular
phone.
One could easily see a child telling his or her parents that it
must be a good deal because their school showed them the motivational
film encouraging its purchase.
These types of commercials have to be demoralizing for students
whose parents don’t want them to have a cell phone or who may want
them to have one but can’t afford it. Channel One News is an advertising
gimmick whose purpose is to make students feel incomplete and unhappy. "You
are only as good as the things you own" is the overwhelming
mantra from Channel One’s TV sets.
The subtext of this commercial is "You could be dancing.
You could be happy. You could be the envy of your friends. All
you need is this phone. Now, go talk to your parents."
