Impressionable Minds, Indelible Images: The Messages of Image and Branding

t was the end of the day, and I had already taught the lesson three times during my earlier twelfth-grade English classes. I posed the question, "How much are you affected or influenced by advertising?" and asked students to rank themselves from one to ten, one being impervious to any type of media persuasion and ten being highly susceptible to media messages. Students assigned themselves a numeric rating and then elaborated in a written explanation. When the students finished writing, I asked them to arrange themselves around the room so that all the ones were on one side and all the tens on the other. During this class, as in each class before, I received a variety of responses. Some students openly admitted that advertising did affect them, citing examples such as buying products they had seen in magazines or getting hungry when they viewed a television commercial for a restaurant. Others were vehemently opposed to the idea that advertising or media could sway their opinions. One student declared, "I don't do anything I don't want to do. Nothing influences the way I make decisions." As he stood there, I could not help but notice that his two closest friends were beside him in the "advertising has no influence" section, and all three of them were wearing different colors of the same name-brand sweatshirt. Obviously, something had swayed their opinions. I wondered how, without lecturing or moralizing on the issue, I could enable my students to see that media influence, like the water in which fish swim in the ocean, is often invisible to us even while we are in the midst of it. No matter how subtle media influence appears, it still can shape our identity, values, and choices. It comes as no surprise to middle and high school teachers that image and identity mean a lot to students. If you have not paid much attention to what your students are wearing, simply walk down the hallways and note the popular styles and name-brand clothing. Not only might you notice that clothing styles often differentiate between those students who are deemed popular and those who are not, but you also may note that specific brand logos either mark or dominate the design of clothing that is considered in style. Last year, I might have had three to four girls wearing oversized, hooded GAP sweatshirts in one class any given day; now I have multiple young men sitting in my classes, confident of their individual style, who are all wearing the same Fox Racing, Abercrombie and Fitch, or Aeropostale t-shirts. While specific brands and student fashion trends ebb and flow like the tide, this phenomenon should not be dismissed as mere adolescent whimsy. The ubiquitous nature of brand advertising not only enables students to instantaneously recognize specific brands, but it encourages students to emotionally connect to these brands and consider them part of their identity, whether that identity is that of an athlete, a skater, a racer, a punk, or a prep. How can we as educators use this real life example to help students see that these advertisements are not naturally occurring phenomenon, but instead, like all media messages, are carefully constructed and aimed at target audiences?