Junk food fight moves to new media

Michael Hedges March 18, 2008

The ad people aren’t stupid. When the job is selling Skittles, they will mass that awesome creativity and sell Skittles. Consumer groups want laws.

A coalition of consumer rights groups pressed their complaints about advertising on World Consumer Rights Day (March 15). So much for self-regulation; consumer groups want ad bans, including on the internet and mobile phones, enforceable by law. The International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF) and Consumers International (CI) presented a new plan, called the ‘International Code on Marketing of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children’. They will present it to the World Health Organization (WHO) General Assembly in May.

“The time has come for all concerned to recognize that an international code, enforceable in law, is the best way forward,” said University of Copenhagen professor Arne Astrup, an advisor to IOTF. “Voluntary measures and individual pledges from some companies offer inadequate protection when children are being targeted in the internet, by mobile phone as well as via television, and especially in developing countries where these kinds of calorie-dense foods can have a devastating impact on children's health.”

New media is targeted by the proposed Code, acknowledging – in a back-handed way – that the intended audience for junk food ads has moved on from traditional media. It calls for a complete ban on radio and television ads for junk – ‘unhealthy’ – food between 6 in the morning and 9 at night, no marketing on websites or mobile phones, no promotion in schools, no ‘attractive’ gifts or toys and no celebrities or cartoon characters. The IOTF defines ‘unhealthy’ food as “energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt.” 

That is junk food.

Not unlike other – mostly failed – attempts at changing behavior by targeting the marketing rather than the product, the Code and its sponsors miss a significant truth about people. They will buy what they want to buy so long as the benefit –and I use ‘benefit’ in purely economic terms - overrides the pain. After decades of tobacco ad bans, mixed with a bit of cultural Calvinism, tobacco use has fallen (in the West) because of restrictive laws, rules and taxes. Driving big tobacco companies into the margins is one thing; driving off Burger King or Nestlé isn’t the same.

Laws in the UK on junk food ads and ads targeting children were hardened recently, the European Commission moving in the same direction. Commercial broadcasters stopped producing programming for kids. Advertising and marketing people got the message, too.

A Eurobarometer study recently showed that in the 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Switzerland more than half of all 9 year olds have mobile phones. Many social networking websites and online games are geared toward young people. New media is a vast unregulated opportunity for selling stuff.

No country, it seems, is immune to obesity. India and China are finding that as economics change people tend to want things they’ve never had before, some of which might be unhealthy. The World Health Organization (WHO) expects 2.3 billion people will be overweight by 2015.

What characterizes this particular assault on advertising is the understanding by healthy lifestyle advocates that soft language and self-regulation goes nowhere. The proposed junk food Code is voluntary. Several major food companies – including Nestlé and Burger King – adopted their own Code last year. Pressure applied by startling statistics and consumer groups moved regulators and advertisers and marketers took note.

Bans on television advertising targeting children were not intended to curtail television programming for children. The world-wide unregulated web, growing wildly in its influence, startles some, amazes others. Other new media – mobile TV in particular – is expected to grow faster. Consumers, some being children, will always be drawn to media content targeting their interests, even if its at the margins.

The ad people know this.