Currently browsing posts about: Marketing to kids

While we are on the topic of marketing to kids, Healthy Eating Research has published a major report on digital food marketing: Evidence-Based Recommendations to Mitigate Harms from Digital Food Marketing to Children Ages 2-17.  

Despite its importance, the report is dense, detailed, and not easy to summarize.  Fortunately, I received an email with Key Messages

• An expert panel convened by Healthy Eating Research reviewed research and current policies on digital food marketing and developed recommendations for government policies, industry practices, and further research.
• Digital food and beverage marketing is embedded in nearly every platform children and adolescents use (websites, mobile apps, social media, video sharing, gaming, streaming TV), promoting sugary drinks, fast food, candy, sugary cereals, and sweet/salty snacks, which is harming children’s health.
• National experts carefully assessed the evidence and found actions policymakers and industry can take to reduce children’s exposure to and the power of unhealthy digital food and beverage marketing.

My recommendation: start with the Fact Sheet for Parents.

The most common types of foods marketed to kids online are fast food, salty snacks, candy, sweet snacks, and sugary drinks. These ads appear on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat; video sharing sites like YouTube and TikTok; gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft; livestream gaming on Twitch and Facebook Gaming; and mobile apps and websites. Younger kids see more ads for candy and sweet snacks, while older kids and teenagers see more ads for snack foods. About 75% of kids have seen ads for energy drinks.

That’s what parents are up against.  As for what to do about it, short of throwing away the phone, the report urges advocacy for phone-free schools and other policies at Fair Play for Kids  and Design It For Us.

It’t tough being a parent these days.  Join those groups and take action!

Resources

• Technical Report
• Executive Summary
• Fact Sheet for Parents

I don’t get it really.  These commercials don’t look any different to me.  Maybe you can tell the difference.

Coca Cola’s annual Christmas commercial has been created with AI this time. pic.twitter.com/xO72akwoBh

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) November 15, 2024

According to news reports, Coca-Cola is getting a big backlash.

Instead of recognizing it was a mistake and apologizing, as many expected, the brand justified its use of AI, stating that it “remains dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology.”

This is all about marketing, and marketing to kids at that.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest did a big report on that some years ago.  It’s still worth reading.

Addition: my distant but dearly loved cousin, Michael Kravit, who is in this business, writes:

Well, since we’re talking advertising, this zevia commercial is their cheeky response to coke’s ad. And they are getting a lot of attention for it.

An investigative report from Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN): “How Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries.”

Nestlé’s leading baby-food brands, promoted in low- and middle-income countries as healthy and key to supporting young children’s development, contain high levels of added sugar. In Switzerland, where Nestlé is headquartered, such products are sold with no added sugar. These are the main findings of a new investigation by Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), which shed light on Nestlé’s hypocrisy and the deceptive marketing strategies deployed by the Swiss food giant.

The report points out that Nestlé (no relation) “currently controls 20 percent of the baby-food market, valued at nearly $70 billion.”

Nestlé promotes Cerelac and Nido as brands whose aim is to help children “live healthier lives”. Fortified with vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients, these products are, according to the multinational, tailored to the needs of babies and young children and help to strengthen their growth, immune system and cognitive development….

Spoiler alert: Our investigation shows that, for Nestlé, not all babies are equal when it comes to added sugar. While in Switzerland, where the company is headquartered, the main infant cereals and formula brands sold by the multinational come without added sugar, most Cerelac and Nido products marketed in lower-income countries do contain added sugar, often at high levels.

For example, in Switzerland, Nestlé promotes its biscuit-flavoured cereals for babies aged from six months with the claim “no added sugar”, while in Senegal and South Africa, Cerelac cereals with the same flavour contain 6 grams of added sugar per serving….

Similarly, in Germany, France and the UK – Nestlé’s main European markets – all formulas for young children aged 12-36 months sold by the company contain no added sugar. And while some infant cereals for young children over one year old contain added sugar, cereals for babies aged six months do not.

Do small amounts of sugar like these make any difference to babies’ health?  After all, 6 gram is just a bit more than a teaspoon.

They might make a big difference:

• They get kids hooked on sugars.
• The sugars can add up quickly.

For sure, this report shows is that sugar is not really necessary.  It is there to encourage sales, not health.

The report is getting international publicity:

• The Guardian: Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, report finds
• DE: https://stories.publiceye.ch/nestle-babyfood
• FR: https://stories.publiceye.ch/nestle-bebes
• SP: https://stories.publiceye.ch/nestle-ninos
• PO: https://stories.publiceye.ch/nestle-criancas

Just before the Christmas holidays, Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind-VT), who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee , held a hearing: What is Fueling the Diabetes Epidemic? 

The Senator’s Tweet:

Some of the quotes from the Senator’s remarks are amazing.  They need to be said, loud and clear:

• Why is the number of children in America today who have Type 2 diabetes estimated to skyrocket by nearly 700% over the next four decades?
• For decades, in my view, we have allowed large corporations in the food and beverage industry to entice children to eat foods and beverages loaded up with sugar, salt, and saturated fat, purposely designed to be over-eaten,
• The situation has gotten so bad that most of what children in America eat today consists of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods that doctors have told us lead to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
• While diabetes and obesity rates in America soar, the food and beverage industry spends billions on advertising to get consumers, including young children, hooked on their unhealthy products.
• This has got to stop. A good place to start? Banning junk food ads targeted at kids.
• This is not a radical idea.
• We must have the courage to take on the greed of the food and beverage industry which, every day, is undermining the health and well-being of our children by pushing extremely unhealthy products which far too often cause obesity and type-2 diabetes.

The hearing began with:

• Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., prepared remarks  
• Ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., prepared remarks

Witness testimony

• Ashley Gearhardt — Professor of psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
• Lindsey Smith Taillie — Associate professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.
• Kasia Lipska — Associate professor of medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn. 
• Natalie Stanback — Volunteer and parent of a child with type 1 diabetes, JDRF, Lewisville, Texas   
• Aaron Kowalski — CEO, JDRF, New York

Senator Sanders also wrote an op-ed in USA Today: “We can’t allow the food and beverage industry to destroy our kids’ health.

Helena Bottemiller Evich, writing in Food Fix “Bernie Sanders vs. Big Food,” asks why Sanders is doing this now?  She has no answer, but I think its fabulous that he is taking this on and joining Senator Cory Booker in this endeavor.

Diet-related chronic diseases are a big problem for kids as well as adults.

It’s way past time to take on the food industry’s manipulative marketing practices.

Cheers to Senators Sanders and Booker.  We need more of you in Congress.

Now that Barbie is a feminist icon, I have to confess I have two of them in my NYU office.

At one point I must have owned three, because here is an illustration from my book, Food Politics, published in 2002.

The feet on the MacDonald’s Barbie are flat—she’s wearing sneakers, appropriately for a doll on her feet all day.

The Oreo purse is a nice touch.

I don’t know what happened to my Coca-Cola Barbie but the other two are still in their boxes.

Who knew?

I thought I had seen everything when it comes to marketing to kids, but I never would have imagined this one.  Sweet drinks aimed at kids with animal-shaped tops: “Collect them all!”

The photo was sent to me by a reader who spotted these in a Safeway in a suburb of Sacramento.  I have not seem them in any of my local New York markets.

The reader also send photos of the Nutrition Facts panel—19 grams of sugars in 6 ounces.

I went to the company website to check the ingredients.

Here’s the list for 100% Fruit Punch Juice

Increasingly and more urgently concerned about the effects on children of unrestricted marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, UNICEF and WHO have produced an invaluable manual on why and how governments must act to curb such marketing.

This is a follow up to the UNICEF report I talked about last week on engagement with food and beverage companies and to the WHO recommendations I posted about yesterday.

WHO and UNICEF are on a roll!

The rationale for this publication:

Food and beverage companies play a significant role in shaping children’s food environments, but their objectives are profit driven rather than child centred. They have a vested commercial interest in increasing sales of their unhealthy products and use highly immersive, engaging – and often unethical – marketing techniques to target children and their caregivers.
We know that food marketing harms children. It negatively affects children’s food preferences, purchase decisions and consumption behaviours, ultimately contributing to childhood obesity and diet-related disease. Food marketing also affects household purchasing decisions and the types of foods that are eaten in the home.

Among this report’s key messages:

• The evidence is clear that food marketing harms children – especially the poorest and most vulnerable.
• Tackling food marketing is challenging: past experience shows that food companies use loopholes and develop new strategies to bypass restrictions.
• Voluntary schemes are ineffective in reducing children’s exposure to foodmarketing.
• Mandatory regulation has the potential to be the most effective path to protecting children from the harmful impact of food
  marketing

Governments must act.  Now.

This exceptionaly timely and important report explains how.

The World Health Organization has just come out with a new report on protecting children from the harms of marketing unhealthy food to kids.

Some conclusions from research on the effects of marketing unhealthy foods to kids:

• Across studies, the most frequently marketed food categories were fast food, sugar-sweetened beverages, chocolate and confectionery, salty and savoury snacks, sweet bakery items and snacks, breakfast cereals, and desserts.
• Reductions in children’s exposure to food marketing were more often found with: mandatory policies; policies designed to restrict food marketing to children, including those older than 12 years; and policies that used a government-led nutrient profile model to determine the foods for which marketing was to be restricted.
• Reductions in the power of food marketing were more often found with: mandatory policies; and policies designed to restrict food marketing to children, including those older than 12 years.
• Policies to protect children from the harmful impacts of food marketing would be highly cost-effective or cost-saving.
• Policies to protect children from the harmful impacts of food marketing can be expected to reduce health inequities.
• In HICs [high-income countries], policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing are largely acceptable to
  the public, but industry has generally opposed government-led restrictions.
• Some countries have successfully implemented policies, demonstrating that policies are acceptable to government and policy-makers and feasible to implement.

Therefore, WHO recommends that policies:

• Be mandatory
• Protect children of all ages
• Use a government-led nutrient profile model to classify foods to be restricted from marketing;
• Be sufficiently comprehensive to minimize the risk of migration of marketing to other media, to other spaces within the same medium or to other age groups
• Restrict the power of food marketing to persuade.

Yes!

WHO has just given governments a mandate to take action.  Go for it!