Club Penguin is a kid-friendly virtual world made for interaction and socialization between peers. Or at least… that’s what we think. All of those websites are advertising tools, the paintbrushes and canvases of greater companies with greater power. They are quite intelligent though, as the advertisement isn’t as obvious or prominent as we would like to think. The ads are well hidden, beautifully composed so that it appears almost indiscernible to your average media literacy student. Looking around for a LONG time, I was able to detect some of those ads. In the foreground, there doesn’t seem like any advertising going on, it just resembles the arctic with the exception of a clothing store, disco, coffee shop and pizzeria. In the coffee shop there is a possible add for Java beans behind the counter, that being two big bags of Java Beans. Their newspaper, the penguin times, can be considered a form of advertising of the TIMES newsletter as its publicizing their title. In the game of CardJitsu, taken from the martial art of Jujitsu, the cards seem to advertise for the game. There are cards that contain pictures of a penguin with a baseball jersey or a penguin wearing a Burberry printed jacket. Club Penguin though, appears to be very careful not to let any form of advertising show. If you look outside of the game frame, advertising seems to be slightly obvious. Present, you can see ads for Disney games, and a section for buying club penguin toys and games. Overall, Club Penguin does a pretty meticulous job out of concealing adverts. The general flow of advertising is directed towards encouraging club penguin members to partake in penguin activities or get a paying membership. Catalogs are placed in almost every room so as to offer the player different things to buy but once you click, the website says you can’t buy unless you’re a member. You can’t get anything unless you’re a member: your penguin remains naked until you pay. They advertise for clothing everywhere, in each and every catalog. The branding is usually in the background, pale yet somewhat evident. Club Penguin wouldn’t want it to be so obvious that they wanted you to be deprived of everything in the game until you paid: its more of an persistent yet friendly reminder that seems to be extremely consistent. The advertising itself is generally part of the backdrop. In the foreground, the penguins that are members are wearing all of this priced clothing and look particularly ravishing compared to my stark naked pink penguin. That, itself, is advertising because: if I was 7 and saw this, I’d definitely want to look as appealing as those other penguins and would subsequently start pestering my parents for a membership, thus the parent-hated nag factor.
There are two important things that you need to see with this website that I have previously explained in terrible order.
1: The advertising and posters/flash-ads are always in the backdrop of the penguin’s everyday environment. (e.g. the card-jitsu with the penguin baseball player.) This is because Club Penguin does not want to come forth as a website that does not have your interest (interest in having fun) in mind.
2: The penguins do all the advertising: Members that have bought the paid package in Club Penguin are all wearing extravagant clothing that you can’t afford to get. This gives all the other non-members a feeling of want and so they are influenced towards getting a membership so as to look as good the others.
Everything in these websites is thought out, hence why its becoming more and more important to be an educated player and consumer in our times.
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