Marketing Poor Health to Kids

You've seen them on TV and in your supermarket aisle: superheroes and cartoon characters touting everything from sodas to sugar-laden cereals and snack chips. Batman, SpongeBob SquarePants and other characters have a willing consumer audience in our nation's children, to the tune of $1.6 billion a year, according to a recent report released by no less than the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The report, "Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation," found that advertising food products to children is all about integrated ad campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes and the Internet. What this essentially means is that every time your child asks for a food item they saw advertised on TV, sends in a proof of purchase or logs on to the Internet to collect points to win prizes distributed by the food manufacturers, they are getting the message that eating these nutritionally deficient foods is actually a good thing.

So, what was the biggest category of marketing expenditure ($492 million) for the 44 companies included in the survey? Carbonated-drink advertising. By comparison, the Dairy Association's "Got Milk?" ads cost approximately $67 million in 2006. However, the report notes that even those ads were aimed toward children and adolescents, featuring such popular celebrities as British soccer star David Beckham, pop singer Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana) and yes, even the aforementioned Batman.

In terms of where the money is spent, the report noted, "Television advertising still dominates the landscape of marketing techniques used to promote foods and beverages to youth; companies reported spending $745 million, or 46% of all reported youth marketing expenditures, on this medium. More than 50% of the television advertising was directed to children under 12, with breakfast cereals and restaurant food accounting for more than half of that advertising. Carbonated beverages and restaurant food dominated adolescent-directed television advertising. All told, traditional measured media' (television, radio and print) accounted for $853 million, or 53% of the reported youth-directed marketing expenditures."

There you have it: the ugly truth about the extent companies go to in order to entice kids to eat less-than-healthy food.