Currently browsing posts about: Marketing to kids

The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the Univeristy of Connecticut  produces terrific reports.  The latest is Baby Food FACTS: Nutrition and marketing of baby and toddler foods and drinks:

Infant formula companies have a marketing problem: breast milk is a better option, all formulas have the same nutrient composition by FDA regulation, and babies only need to use formula for a few months.

Baby food companies also have a marketing problem: babies can eat table foods (suitably ground or cut) and don’t really need the stuff in jars (convenient thought they may be).

The Rudd Center report takes a good hard look at the

• Contents of food and drink products marketed to parents for their babies and toddlers (up to age 3)
• The marketing messages used to promote these products
• Degree to which marketing messages correspond with expert advice on feeding young children

The findings: The nutritional quality is pretty much as advertised but nearly 60 percent of advertising dollars go for products that are not recommended for young children such as sugar-sweetened toddler milk, nutritionally poor snack food, and Pediasure, a high-calorie liquid nutrition supplement.

Here’s the full report 

And here’s a summary

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has a new Issue Brief on food companies’ use of branded characters to market to kids.  Here’s what it’s talking about:

These, RWJ says, work better with junk foods than healthy foods, even though some child health advocates have called for their use only for healthy foods.

I don’t want them used to sell anything to kids.  I don’t think anyone should be marketing anything to kids.

RWJ’s assessment of the present situation?  “Significant opportunities for improvement still exist.”

No kidding.

I greatly enjoy Food-Navigator’s collections of articles on specific topics.  Here’s one on marketing foods to kids.

While there is some evidence that the tide may now be turning on childhood obesity, 8.4% of US 2-5 year-olds; 17.7% of 6-11 year-olds and 20.5% of 12-19-year-olds are still obese, and many are lacking in essential nutrients from potassium, dietary fiber and calcium, to vitamin D. So how can the food industry respond to these concerns and develop more nutritious, but appealing snacks, meals and beverages for kids?

• SPONSORED LINK: The Booming Kids’ Food & Beverage Market: Parents are looking for healthier options for their children, and smart food and beverage manufacturers are listening. See how to gain parents’ attention and innovate in the children’s food & beverage space…   Click Here
• 8 healthy food trends to watch in 2016 that could influence children’s eating:The shift towards cleaner, more nutrient dense foods will continue to spread in the US in the coming year with parents increasingly looking for healthy options for the whole family – including picky children, who in generations past might have been served chicken nuggets or mac and cheese instead of baked chicken and veggies. .. Read
• True Drinks strikes budget-friendly balance between marketing AquaBall to kids and parents: A common conundrum for marketers of children’s food and beverages is how to engage two sets of stakeholders without doubling the budget. .. Read
• Mobile app aims to help children pick healthy, portion-controlled food: Ensuring children have healthy options in their lunches and for snacks is one way to help them fight obesity, but for the times when they select their own food at restaurants and friends’ houses, a new app and coaching program from Kurbo Health Inc. can help them eat right. .. Read
• Once Upon a Farm: In 3-5 years, every baby food section in the country will have a refrigerator: High-pressure-processing (HPP) – which gave birth to the super-premium juice category – will also play a disruptive role in the baby food market in the next five years, predict the founders of Once Upon a Farm, a new baby food brand in a pouch that will be merchandised in the chiller… Read
• Pure Spoon CEO: HPP is going to turn the baby food category on its head: It won’t happen overnight, but the future of babyfood is in the chiller, predicts one Texas-based entrepreneur pioneering the application of high pressure processing (HPP) in a category she claims is ripe for disruption… Read
• Plum Organics sales surge 44% in 2015 as ‘food-forward’ formulations tap into needs of Millennial shoppers: Dollar sales of Plum Organics surged 44.2% in measured channels* in the past 52 weeks, 3.8 times the average rate of growth for brands in the organic baby food segment, says the company, which has secured a 7.2% share of the $1.6bn US baby food and snacks category… Read
• Continual evolution is key to survival in competitive food market, Momme Meals exec says: To make it in the highly competitive food and beverage segment, startups need to listen to consumers and evolve to meet changing demands – even if that means letting go of their “baby,” says the founder of Momme Meals. .. Watch now
• Go Gourmet helps pouches grow-up from baby food to snacks for school-children: Go Gourmet wants to “up the ante” in the applesauce and fruit cup aisle with its “superfood snack” Slammers – premium fruit and veggie purees for school-aged children in pouches that pose a triple threat with taste, nutrition and personality, says CEO Michael Watt. .. Read
• Back to Nature Foods Co. repositions SnackWell’s as a “free-from” line: Back to Nature Foods Co.’s revitalization of the recently acquired iconic SnackWell’s brand is an example of how established companies can refresh aging brands that are struggling to better compete with new products from disruptive startups… Watch now
• Healthy NPD should be the starting point for kids’ food: The ‘good for you’ trend in children’s food is growing, and small companies would do well to focus on healthy healthy new product development in order to compete with big players who have the money to reformulate and rebrand, says one analyst… Read

Addition, February 3: A reader reminds me that Food-Navigator published a guide to creating successful children’s brands a couple of months ago.

Vanessa Domine.  Healthy Teens, Healthy Schools: How Media Literacy Can Renew Education in the United States.  Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

Here’s my blurb:

If you are not concerned about the effects of exposure to electronic media on the health of teenagers, you should be.   This book presents a well-researched, highly compelling case for the urgent need for media literacy education to be incorporated into school wellness programs as soon as possible.

For information about how online marketing affects kids’ food choices, take a look at the work of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, particularly in media advocacy training.

Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) also has resources about online marketing to kids (scroll down for a list).

A coalition of children’s and consumer advocacy groups (see list below) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charging that Google’s new YouTube Kids app violates restrictions on marketing junk foods to kids.

The coalition’s letter to the FTC details the charges.  YouTube Kids, it says:

• Intermixes advertising and programming in ways that deceive young children.
• Features “branded channels” for McDonald’s, Barbie, Fisher-Price, and other companies.
• Distributes “user-generated” segments that feature toys, candy, and other products without disclosing the business relationships.

The Washington Post gives some examples:

On the American Greetings’ Strawberry Shortcake channel, for instance, a 37-second video features the red-haired doll describing the company’s “Food Fair” app, where characters pick ingredients for recipes. At the end, a banner appears showing the app can be downloaded on iTunes. McDonald’s has a 7-minute video dispelling myths about the contents of Chicken McNuggets. On another video, a deep-voiced announcer warns, “All vegetarians, foodies and gastronauts, kindly avert your eyes,” with a slow-cam close up of a juicy Big Mac. “You can’t get juiciness like this from soy or quinoa.”

Here’s the Coalition list: the Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children Now, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Corporate Accountability International, and Public Citizen.

This will be fun to watch.  Stay tuned.

• ‘Big Food’: taking a critical perspective on a global public health problem, by Simon N. Williams & Marion Nestle. 

• The transitional dynamics of caloric ecosystems: changes in the food supply around the world, by Sanjay Basu.
• Big Food without big diets? Food regimes and Kenyan diets, by K. O’Neill.
• Density of outdoor food and beverage advertising around schools in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and Manila (The Philippines) and implications for policy, by Bridget Kelly, Lesley King, Batjargal Jamiyan, Nyamragchaa Chimedtseren, Bolorchimeg Bold, Victoria M. Medina, Sarah J. De los Reyes, Nichel V. Marquez, Anna Christine P. Rome, Ariane Margareth O. Cabanes,John Juliard Go, Tsogzolmaa Bayandorj, Marie Clem B. Carlos & Cherian Varghese. 
• Snack food advertising in stores around public schools in Guatemala, by Violeta Chacon, Paola Letona, Eduardo Villamor & Joaquin Barnoya.  
• Comparison of food industry policies and commitments on marketing to children and product (re)formulation in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, by Gary Sacks, Melissa Mialon, Stefanie Vandevijvere, Helen Trevena, Wendy Snowdon, Michelle Crino & Boyd Swinburn.  
• Encouraging big food to do the right thing for children’s health: a case study on using research to improve marketing of sugary cereals, by Jennifer L. Harris, Megan E. LoDolce & Marlene B. Schwartz.  
• Big Soda’s long shadow: news coverage of local proposals to tax sugar-sweetened beverages in Richmond, El Monte and Telluride.  Laura Nixon, Pamela Mejia, Andrew Cheyne & Lori Dorfman.  

Commentaries

• Big Food’ and ‘gamified’ products: promotion, packaging, and the promise of fun, by Charlene Elliott.
• Food as pharma: marketing nutraceuticals to India’s rural poor, by Alice Street.

Thanks to Simon Williams for initiating (and doing the heavy lifting on) this project, and to all the terrific contributors.

Enjoy!

Healthy Eating Research (HER), a group sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has just released a report on food marketing to kids, an issue brief with recommendations, and an Infographic summarizing the report’s major points.

The recommendations are aimed at the food industry’s voluntary guidelines for what and how junk foods can be marketed to kids.  These are famously weak and HER set out to tweak them to make the recommendations stronger.

This report provides an excellent summary of what’s wrong with marketing to kids.

But its recommendations are disappointing.  Here they are from the Infographic:

These are undoubtedly too small for you to read and, in any case, are written so tentatively—they do not use the word “should”—that they require translation.  Here’s mine:

Guidelines for food marketing should apply to:

• Kids age 14 or younger (not 11)
• Audiences containing 25% or more of kids under age 14 (not 35%)
• Both food products and brands (not just products).
• All marketing aimed at kids, everywhere kids are (not just TV or Internet)

These are tweakings of voluntary guidelines.

I don’t see the point.  If we really want the food industry to stop marketing unhealthy foods and drinks to kids, the guidelines can’t be voluntary and tweakings are unlikely to help.

Food marketing to kids is flat-out unethical and should stop.

The industry will never do this voluntarily.

That’s the issue such reports need to address.

The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity has just released its 2014 Sugary Drink FACTS report.

Some of the findings:

• Beverage companies spent $866 million to advertise unhealthy drinks in 2013, and increase since the previous year.
• Children and teens remain key target audiences for that advertising.
• Much marketing is done through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and advergame apps.
• Pepsi spent $16 million on Spanish TV advertising in 2013, up from none in 2010.
• Dr Pepper Snapple spent $20 million (up from $7 million in 2010) to support its regular sodas.
• African-American teens watch more than three times as many ads for Coca-Cola as do white kids.

Useful Rudd Center resources:

• 4-page summary 
• Full Report
• A  video
• Tools for consumers
• Tools for researchers