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Crying Foul over Online Junk Food
Marketing
A new
report focuses on advertising methods, such as through
social networks, and urges lawmakers to restrict junk
food advertising to kids online
Catherine Holahan
Business Week
August 12, 2008
At age 2, Zameen Rashid is well acquainted with Lucky,
the leprechaun who lists the marshmallow clovers, moons,
and stars in boxes of General Mills' (GIS) Lucky Charms
cereal. Maybe too well, says his mother, Fahmida Rashid,
who frets that too-frequent exposure to food ads in
video games, TV shows, and the Web will foster unhealthy
eating habits. "Just as you wouldn't expect to see a
tobacco ad on a kids' site or show, there shouldn't be
junk food ads there either," says Rashid, a 31-year-old
resident of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Consumer and children's advocacy groups share Rashid's
concerns. Having successfully lobbied the government to
place limits on junk food ads on TV, they now target
marketing to kids via the Web. "While there are some
rules for TV, there are no rules when you move online,"
says Patti Miller, vice-president of children's advocacy
group Children Now and a member of the Federal
Communications Commission's Task Force on Media &
Childhood Obesity. "We don't want to reduce junk food
advertising to kids [on TV] and then find that it has
just moved to another platform."
The worry is that food companies are bombarding kids
with ads for non-nutritious foods, fueling the obesity
epidemic that, according to the Centers for Disease
Control & Prevention, has increased the proportion of
overweight kids under age 12 fivefold in the last
generation and left almost 19% of kids between 6 and 11
overweight.
A new report, commissioned by the Berkeley Media Studies
Group, part of the Public Health Institute in Berkeley,
Calif., focuses on methods of advertising food to kids
that have become particularly popular during the past
two years, such as spreading messages through social
networks, and urges lawmakers to restrict junk food
advertising to kids online. It will be presented to
members of Congress and has been shown to officials at
the European Union. "With social networking, marketers
are getting the kids to create the ads and share them
with their friends," says Kathryn Montgomery, an author
of the report and an American University communications
professor. "It is incredibly sticky and it is viral.
Regulators need to understand that."
Marketing to Kids: Expense Estimates Differ
The report's authors recommend that regulators restrict
the number of ads for unhealthy snacks on kids' Web
sites. Advocates also urge a ban on advertising junk
food to kids under 12 and the creation of industrywide
standards concerning what constitutes healthier snack
food, ideally in line with recommendations for reducing
childhood obesity released in 2005 by the U.S. National
Academies' Institute of Medicine.
The authors say their recommendations go further than
those outlined in a July 29 Federal Trade Commission
report that focuses on marketing activities in 2006.
That report found that while some food marketers target
youth too aggressively, the industry as a whole had made
strides to reduce food advertising to children. Of the
$1.6 billion spent in 2006 by food and beverage
marketers to promote their products to kids and teens,
nearly 63% was spent targeting kids over 12, according
to the FTC. That's a far cry from the $10 billion some
researchers had estimated was spent on marketing to kids
between 4 and 12 alone, the commission notes. "The
report finds that, although there is room for
improvement, the food and beverage industries have made
significant progress," the FTC said in a statement.
Montgomery and co-author Jeff Chester, executive
director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public
interest group focused on Internet policy, say the FTC's
estimates of spending on youth advertising are
misleading. New online advertising techniques let food
marketers reach more kids and teens, for longer periods
and for a fraction of the cost than in the past. For
example, Coca-Cola (KO) launched a campaign with social
network Facebook last year that lets users create a
"Sprite Sips" character that can be shared with friends.
Though Coca-Cola pays to create the ad, it doesn't have
to pay for it "going viral" and being passed around by
users. "The cost of reaching and engaging a lot more
kids is a lot less than the cost of what it is to buy a
30-second television ad," says Montgomery, adding that
in many cases ads are spread among social networking
friends at no cost to the marketer.
Regulatory Authority Is Unclear
The Berkeley report's authors also say junk food
companies have become particularly adept at targeting
young people at the greatest risk for obesity, such as
inner-city African Americans, through so-called
behavioral targeting, which delivers ads based on a
person's Web-surfing habits. For example, advertisers
can concentrate junk food ads on computers located in
urban areas and whose users have visited sites popular
with inner-city youth. "They are using a powerful
arsenal of tools to target children and adolescents so
they can engage in these unhealthy eating behaviors,"
says Chester.
A challenge consumer groups face in getting the FTC or
others to act is that is it's not clear who has the
authority to regulate advertising online. Congress
stripped the FTC of its authority to regulate
advertising after the organization restricted sugary
snack ads on children's programming. The Federal
Communications Commission, meanwhile, is largely focused
on regulating television advertising. "To show that the
government needs to regulate this advertising to improve
children's diets would be pretty tough," says Mary
Engle, the FTC's associate director for advertising
practices, adding that the link between junk food
advertising and rising youth obesity rates isn't proven.
Placing Responsibility
Food marketers insist the industry is successfully
policing itself and that no government regulation is
needed. Starting this year, McDonald's (MCD) announced
it would only advertise to kids those foods, including
Apple Dippers, that fit within guidelines set in 2005 by
the U.S. Agriculture Dept. McDonald's declined to make
an executive available to comment. Kraft (KFT) only
features products that meet higher nutrition criteria on
Web sites where more than 35% of total visitors are
under 12, says a company spokesman. "We think that
companies can act on a self-regulatory basis much more
quickly than the government can," the FTC's Engle says.
Advocates for regulation also say that the FTC's numbers
on advertising to kids under 12 fail to account for Web
sites that are officially created for older kids, but
lure younger ones. For example, Kraft's NabiscoWorld.com
is intended for kids older than 12. But the site
includes games that could appeal to younger audiences,
such as Oreos Race for the Stuf, whereby a
player-controlled character can twist, lick, and dunk
oversize Oreo cookies. NabiscoWorld.com, along with
Wrigley's (WWY) Candystand, Pizza Hut, and Pepsi (PEP)
Stuff were among the 10 most popular food sites on the
Web in July, according to research firm Hitwise.
Some consumers and marketers say families, rather than
the government, should be responsible for monitoring
kids' exposure to advertising (BusinessWeek.com,
5/17/07). "Listen up, fellow parents: when we point a
collective finger, three more are pointing right back at
us," wrote J. Kristin Ament, a writer for online
marketing blog Unbound Edition, in a 2007 response to an
earlier report by Chester and Montgomery. "When will we
stop playing the victim and start taking personal
responsibility for our kids' health and eating habits."
That's just what Rashid, of Brooklyn, is out to do. And
she doesn't have qualms about asking regulators for a
little help.
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