Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

With all the money being spent this time of the year on non-stop ad campaigns promoting electronic games, why am I not surprised to read that a South Carolina boy, 12, was arrested Sunday morning after his mother called police to report that he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission. According to a Rock Hill Police Department report, the kid opened a Nintendo Game Boy, though he had been directed not to by family members. When the boy's mother learned that the $85 gift had been opened, she called the cops, who then charged the kid with petty larceny. In an interview with a local newspaper, the boy's mother, a 27-year-old single parent, described her son as a disruptive child, noting that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior at school and home. Well all I can say is that if you have to call the cops to control your twelve year old kid, you’re doing something drastically wrong, and maybe you should buy him something he can’t open ahead of time, like two weeks in a boot camp, starting January 1^st. But then again, simple arithmetic would point out that when the mother had the kid, she wasn’t much older than the kid is now. So go figure.