Advertising with children: notes on the Itaú Social Program “Read for a Child”

Abstract

The text exposes the results of a documentary and qualitative investigation that had as its corpus of analysis the Itaú Social Foundation's “Read for a child” program. More specifically, the following question was focused: What repercussions do Banco Itaú's marketing strategies on childhood bring to critical thinking in the field of education? The analysis proposal was based methodologically on Penn (2002), about images, since the corpus encompasses commercial advertising campaigns constructed both verbal and non-verbal. The text shows that it is possible to think about the role of the school and the role of the financial institution that builds an entire report on the role of family education and also of books and reading. One can even question whether there is a role reversal. This denotes that education professionals must question the limits of the alleged authority of advertising to deal with such powerful themes for the field of human formation. We conclude that teacher training is essential to allow them to question the displacement of the school's pedagogical authority to the media and advertising. It is also equivalent to thinking about the power and role of schools and teachers in contemporary society, of the decisive importance of the educational authority of that institution and of these subjects for the critical reflection and training of children.