Prevention at LCDAC Hosts “The Media Bowl”

The Prevention Department at LCDAC recently hosted “The Media Bowl,” a small campaign to raise awareness regarding how media messages, such as commercials, can influence young people.  “The Media Bowl” is based off an initiative by The Prevention Alliance that asks students in Grades 6 – 12 about the commercials that they viewed during the Super Bowl.

For the 2022 Super Bowl, the Prevention Alliance chose not to host their annual “Big Bowl Vote” which asks students in grades 6 – 12 about their favorite Super Bowl commercials and why they liked or remembered them.  The goal is to show how marketing leaves an impact and how many companies, including but not limited to alcohol companies, can market to the wrong age group in order to leave a lasting impression.   Since they chose not to host this, we decided to adapt their model and host it only in Lawrence County. 

Last year, we had 504 students participate in Lawrence County. The most remembered commercial by students was the “Drake from State Farm” commercial.  This shows that when youth see celebrities they know and like, they will remember a product or service that many, if not all of them, have no use for at this point in their life.  This year, we had 1,149 students in grades 6 -12 participate.  The participants spanned all eight school districts including LCCTC. 

50.44% (579) of the students who participated said they did not watch any part of the Super Bowl, including the commercials.  31.36% (360) of students responded that they watched the whole game and commercials.  The remaining students watched either the first half or the second half or responded by saying they only really watched the commercials.  That means that 569 students saw at least half of the commercials.  These are the only students included in the final results.  One student skipped this question. 

The most memorable commercial according to the students this year was the Crypto.com commercial that featured Lebron James and a CGI version of his high school self before entering into the NBA.  The Doritos, Cheetos, Lays, and Pepsi commercial were close runners up.   

The majority of the students (225) stated that the reason they remember the commercials they remember is because the commercials were funny.  119 said it was because of special effects and 95 said that they remembered the celebrity it featured.  The students were able to choose multiple reasons on this question. 

239 students remember seeing at least one alcohol commercial during the game.  The majority of the students said they remembered the alcohol commercials because they were funny.  When asked, the overwhelming majority of students said that they felt that the alcohol ads were appealing to young people including teenagers.   

This survey informs our Prevention Specialists as to what media messages our county’s students are taking in and helps in building lessons on Media Literacy in Junior and Senior High classrooms.

Media Literacy involves the way we access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate media messages (videos, music, clothing, texts, conversations, etc) and is an essential skill for youth and adults to learn in the media-centric world we live in.