Week 10

Communication Objective: Parents need to take on the responsibilities of parenting and stop allowing cable television to rear their children.

Target Audience: This ad is targeted at parents who have neglected their children and hired cable television as the babysitter. The group of parents mostly affected by this ad would be those who are high income earners. At the expense of their high demanding careers, their children have been forsaken and are parented by cable television.

Format: This advertisement can be advertised in parenting magazines, TV commercials, and as pop-up ads on the internet. If the advertisement is presented in parenting magazines, then homemakers and moms with less demanding careers could serve as advocates and initiate the guilt in parents who leave their television set to do the parenting. Advertising with TV commercials would target the children who are constantly watching television and inform them that they are victims of bad parenting. Ultimately, children would see these ads and demand less television and more parenting from mom and dad. Since some parents may never read the parenting magazine and view TV commercials, the use of internet pop-up ads would catch their attention. These internet pop-ups would catch these slacking parents when they sit down to open their most important e-mails.

Concept: The concept of this ad is that parents should invest more time in parenting their children instead of leaving them to be cared for by unsupervised cable television. Parents need to reevaluate their priorities and really think about who is babysitting their children

Visual: The image in this advertisement portrays the sexual appeal that many television shows offer children when they are not being supervised by parents. Although many parents may be fans of shows such as Sex in the City or other sexual provocative dramas or even violent dramas, they fail to realize that these shows are not suitable for their youngsters.

Headline: The headline, “Free In-Home Babysitting” is eye catching because parents are always looking for affordable child care services. For parents in whom money is not an issue, the convenience of the services being provided in the home will be appealing to them.

The Copy: The purpose of this ad is to encourage parents to think about the amount of time they permit their children to spend with cable TV. Although parents have not really hired Comcast’s On Demand feature to babysit, the reality is that children are gaining a majority of their education from shows that are not suitable for them. This argument is not to say that cable TV does not offer educational shows for children to view, but there is a responsibility for parents to choose these types of shows for their children. If parents fail to surrender to the demands of parenting, then their youngsters will grow up pursuing the sexual and violent images they see offered through cable TV. It is imperative that parents discuss these critical issues without simply allowing for the modern day babysitter, TV, to construct their identity and reality.