The Bureau of Consumer Protection, a division of the Federal Trade Commission, has created a website called Admongo that aims to teach kids how to read advertisements with a more critical eye. In other words, they’re trying to protect children from marketing’s horrible influence. Amusingly, the site was created by marketing agency Fleishman-Hillard. You select a character and play some little games that are supposed to edu-tain you about advertising by using fake brands like Choco Crunch’n Good cereal and Cleanology acne medication. Apparently, the National Advertising Review Council is cool with this because it’s “a straightforward approach that does not go a step further and demonize advertising.” If the campaign does its job, by the time the kids are done, they’ll also be able to realize that Admongo is itself advertising that seeks to alter their behavior, based on the older generation’s assumption that they watch a Cocoa Puffs commercial without going cuckoo. Whoa, meta.
—Posted by Rebecca Cullers