Persuading From a Child's Perspective

One of the potential angles that I am thinking of taking in approach to my research is looking at issues from a child's perspective. Having that element of naïvety from children creates a stronger emotive and empathetic response from the audience. This is something that I touched on a few weeks ago when looking at the stickers drawn by children saying,'my daddy gave blood today' as well as the road safety signs designed by children. The rawness and energy in their hand drawn images 'is what it is' in all its honesty. 

I finally started to record and experiment with drawings in my sketchbook after having fear of the blank page since I started the project. Reverting back to one of my original topics of interest, 'developing awareness for prescription drug abuse', I tried to imitate the drawing and thinking style of a young child being exposed to prescription drugs.

I then had a flashback of nostalgia from the days when I was given a spoonful of calpol whenever I felt under the weather. I used to absolutely love the taste of calpol like so many thousands of other infants. I vividly remember telling my Mum that, "I wished I could drink it all the time", to which she gave me a stern warning of how poorly it would make me if I drank too much calpol. That was the first time that I became aware of the dangers of prescription drugs.

In the process of illustrating this statement, I realised that this could be the start of a sort of synthesis. The type of approach above could well be used to advertise children's medicines, both visually and combined with the use of language. Like I mentioned above, honestly quoting children's expressions is a very powerful tool in advertising, due to the fact that they don't have the urge to filter out any politically incorrect expressions in the same way that adults do.

Additionally I had a look at how children, as well as some ideological images were used in early adverts to persuade people to smoke cigarettes, and later images campaigning about the adverse affect smoking can have on the smoker and those around them.

• (1-2) Using child's handwriting and images that are associated with scaring children is really harrowing and un-nerving
• (3) 'Smoking kills' label format to express the child's thoughts, as well as implying that the child is smoking too (second hand smoke)
• (4) Graphic visual metaphors of children being suffocated by cigarette smoke. Weapons are represented in the form of smoke to reinforce the severity of smoking, i.e., strangulation and suffocating from a plastic bag blocking airways
• (5) Idealisation. Pretty white girl applying makeup and jewellery, replacing lipstick and necklace with cigarettes
• (6-7) Children being used to sell cigarettes!! What the hell.
• (8-9) Trust. Quoting a medical professional's advice on the product is more likely to urge a consumer to make a purchase.
• (10) Idealisation, 'do you want to be happy-go lucky'? The girl in the advert clearly meets this criteria, persuading others that if you smoke these cigarettes you will be as happy as she is.

I think I am on to something here! I will discuss this tomorrow in my tutorial with Pete, and try to find some way that I can tie all of the loose ends up with my research so far and create a clear pathway in terms of further research and development.