Branded

Did you know you’re being brainwashed? Corporations spend billions of dollars annually to woo teen and pre-teen consumers, but today’s efforts to control young minds and wattles take marketing strategies to a dangerous new level. Alissa Quart’s incisive expose takes the reader to the dark side of teen marketing, revealing an aggressive and disturbing world in which adults build careers out in insinuating themselves into ‘friendships’ with young people in order to monitor what they wear, eat, listen to, and talk about with each other. From the 20-somethings who walk the streets looking for ‘teen cool’ to the marketing teams behind the scenes in the corporate effort to ‘sponsor’ schools, Quart introduces us to the most threatening of these initiatives. This compelling book discovers how teens succumb to content commercial battering designed to reduce their individuality and creativity, the effects on targeted messages on emerging teen identities and how they are subtly taught to market to each other. But we also witness the bravery of isolated young people who fight back, turning the tables on the cocksure mega-corporations striving to crack the codes of ‘teen cool’. These kids prove it isn’t necessary to give in to branding, but its a drop in the ocean when an entire generation is being raised to consume.