Junk Food 2.0
We all know Trix are for kids, but a new report claims marketers are using new media to trick regulators and entice our kids into eating more junk food. Commissioned by the Berkeley Media Studies Group, “Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age” [full report; eight-page summary] documents how advertisers are increasingly tapping into our modern-age “marketing ecosystem,” leveraging video games, instant messaging, online social networking sites, and behavioral targeting software to shill more sugary snacks to kids. (Go ahead: “Play games with the Silly Rabbit!“) And no wonder! Consider the advantages. Advertising junk food on TV is regulated by the government. Marketing via new media, however, is arguably less expensive and more effective—and there are no legal limits! At least, not for now…
According to a well-reported piece in BusinessWeek today about marketing junk food to children online, there’s a growing call for greater government oversight. In 2006, food and beverage advertisers spent 37% of their $1.6-billion youth-marketing budgets targeting kids under 12. With 20% of 6-11 year-olds currently overweight, parents are pushing for further regulation (though the FTC has, to date, declined to get involved). The article does a great job of characterizing the debate from multiple angles, drawing perspective from parents, academics, children’s advocacy groups, government regulators, and a few anti-regulation sources. That said, there is one obvious voice missing: the marketers themselves. (McDonald’s declined to comment.) Call it sweet silence.
But seriously: any bold marketers of junk food, er, I mean “foods of minimal nutritional value” care to make their case? How about the software programmers behind the kid-sticky technicolor dreamscapes at sites like Wrigley’s Candystand and the “magical realm” over at Lucky Charms‘?
October 13th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“Industry self-regulation will only work if it is developed and implemented in the context of strong governmental and public oversight,” according to the report.
One recommended step is to create avenues “so young people can become leaders in the effort to monitor and understand new marketing practices targeting them and to educate their peers—and adults—about digital marketing and its relationship to health.” Determining—or even hypothesizing—how avenues can be created is left to the next study. Determining how to develop and implement so-called industry self-regulation in the context of strong governmental and public oversight is again left to yet another. Determining how is not determined.