My sister wrote this as a comment to a post I wrote about car decals and I think it is too important to leave in the comments section so with little introduction..here is a post from my sister. (who by the way is my very best girlfriend)
Sister is getting on her soapbox.
I am so sick of companies that prey on parents for profit. This goes along with the sticker thing. They don't just hand those out. Someone came up with the idea and then took advantage of the parents' fears to convince them all that STICKERS SAVE LIVES. If you don't buy a sticker of Caitlin's cheerleading megaphone, she will probably get knocked up. If you're not proudly displaying Justin's tiny white football, baseball, AND soccerball, you might as well start saving up for his bail money.
I see this "marketing of experience" at my school all the time. They start small with the elite baseball/select soccer sticker, so that by the time the kids are seniors they've got the parents and the kids primed to buy.
I have to give up one class period every year for an hour-long advertisement for graduation. The Josten's representitive tries to convince the kids that they have to have a tee shirt with their class year...like they're going to forget what year they graduated. The one that kills me is when they tell them that the average student orders 100 graduation announcements. (Avoid that embarrassing trip to the grocery store after your favorite checker finds out your kid walked the stage without her knowing.) And don't get me started on the senior portrait. (Spend less than $2000, and Ashley may just have to drop out of school all together.)
My (our) mother did such a great job of avoiding that trap. When I moved back home (at the age of 33) a few years back, I noticed Mother had my 5x7 senior portrait on her bedside table. I was looking at it when she told me, "Every time I look at that picture I feel bad."
Slightly taken aback, I asked why.
She explained, "With Athena and Brother both in private colleges, we were so strapped your senior year that you had to have your senior portrait made in a dress I had sewn for Athena a few years earlier and we could only afford that one picture."
HERE'S MY POINT: I had no idea. I loved the tulip sleeves of that dress and it was flattering. It never occurred to me that we should have had twenty-four poses of me with my soccerball and tennis racket, holding my faux diploma, lounging on the porch of a non-existent house,...
So my advise is spend time with your kids, take them on special trips to the museum, let them braid your pixie-short hair while you visit. Because those are the memories that will loom long after they've wrecked that mini-van.
any idea what those things cost?
Posted by: brother | December 18, 2005 at 11:45 AM
That's a great story. And yes, entirely too much marketing goes on directed at both kids and their parents, at school, on television, etc.
Posted by: deputyheadmistress | December 18, 2005 at 12:18 PM
I agree about marketing to parents. We have people ask us to buy stuff to help support their children's public schools - candy, magazine subscriptions, candles, giftwrap, etc. I imagine it wouldn't go over too well if I solicited money from them for our homeschool books! :P
Posted by: Leslie | December 18, 2005 at 01:04 PM