Since its founding in 2000, CCFC has successfully taken on some of the world’s largest, most powerful, multi-national corporations. Read our 2010/2011 Annual Report.

2011

• As a result of CCFC’s efforts, Scholastic Inc. stops distributing the “United States of Energy,” fourth grade teaching materials paid for by the American Coal Foundation. Our efforts garner a great deal of press, including an article and an editorial in the New York Times, as well as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.

• Following that success, CCFC partners with Change.org to rally tens of thousands of parents, educators and grassroots advocates to successfully persuade Scholastic to drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce sponsored teaching materials.

• CCFC files a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Your Baby Can Read, a video series for babies that is marketed as teaching reading to infants and toddlers. The complaint is featured on the Today show and in newspapers around the country.
• We file a petition with the Federal Communications Commission against Zevo-3, a children’s television program produced by the shoe company Skechers and starring the company’s advertising spokescharacters, charging that the show violates the Children’s Television Act. Within days, the FCC opens an inquiry into our complaint and more than 1,500 individuals and organizations file comments in support. The complaint receives extensive media coverage including a favorable editorial in The Boston Globe.
• CCFC coordinates its first national Screen-Free Week (formerly TV-Turnoff) April 18-24. Families, schools and communities all over the country join in the celebration, and over 75 organizations sign on as official endorsers. The week receives extensive press in newspapers around the country.
• We launch the School Bus Ad Action Center and stop legislation that would allow ads on school buses in Washington, Oklahoma, Florida, Rhode Island, Idaho and New York.
• In Toronto, CCFC members help stop a plan to show 2 hours of ads a day on digital monitors throughout high schools.
• We receive a grant from the David Rockefeller Fund to conduct interviews with new mothers with the goal of discovering what messages and materials would help convince them to keep their babies away from screens and limit screen time for older children.

2010

• A CCFC campaign convinces Scholastic Inc. to discontinue its SunnyD Book Spree program, which promoted the sugar-laden beverage to schoolchildren.

• Thousands of parents join our efforts to stop Nickelodeon from marketing violent and sexualized computer games on its site AddictingGames.com to preschoolers. As a result, the media giant stops promoting the games on NickJr.com and other websites that target very young children, and Kraft pulls its Lunchables advertising from AddictingGames.

• CCFC becomes the home of Screen-Free Week (formerly TV-Turnoff), at the request of the initiative’s founders, the Center for Screen Time Awareness.
• CCFC organizes a concerted effort to persuade the National Association for the Education of Young Children to adopt the AAP’s screen time recommendations in its policy statement on technology in early childhood programs.
• We host our 7th Consuming Kids Summit and award Annie Leonard the 3rd Fred Rogers Integrity Award .
• CCFC Members vote Nickelodeon’s AddictingGames.com CCFC’s 2nd recipient of the TOADY
  (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young children) Award.
• CCFC Members help stop the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education from approving on a new policy that would allow ads in San Diego schools.
• An outpouring of public support enables CCFC to successfully transition to our new home at Third Sector New England from Judge Baker Children’s Center. The forced move came after publicity surrounding our successful campaign that persuaded Disney to offer refunds on Baby Einstein videos and phone calls from Disney representatives.

2009

• After years of effort, including a Federal Trade Commission complaint, CCFC convinces the Walt Disney Company to offer an unprecedented refund to anyone who bought a Baby Einstein video over the past five years. CCFC had sought the refund for parents as part its ongoing campaign to stop the false and deceptive marketing of baby videos as educational.

• After a three-year campaign by CCFC, BusRadio - the company that planned to "take targeted student marketing to the next level" by advertising on school buses - ceases operations. CCFC monitored BusRadio’s content and advertising and organized parents to stop BusRadio in some of the biggest school districts around the country.

• After CCFC documented how violent blockbuster PG-13 movies were being marketed extensively to children as young as preschoolers, the Federal Trade Commission agreed to investigate the marketing plans for several films rated PG-13 for violent content.
• CCFC received the 2009 Josephine Scout Fuller award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility.  The award is given each year to an individual or organization involved with peace and social justice for children.
• CCFC's report on the commercialization of Scholastic's Book Clubs is featured in the New York Times and Associated Press and launches a national conversation about Scholastic's role in schools.
• Over 6,000 people vote for CCFC’s first TOADY (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children)  award to highlight the commercialization of children’s play. The winner? The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie.

2008

• After receiving more than 5,000 emails from CCFC members, Scholastic, Inc. agrees to stop marketing the Bratz Brand in schools.

• In Seminole County, Florida, we successfully pressure McDonald’s to end its practice of sending report cards in envelopes advertising Happy Meals.

• In response to CCFC’s complaint about the marketing of violent PG-13 movies to young children, the Federal Trade Commission urges the Motion Picture Association of America to develop a marketing policy consistent with the PG-13 rating.

• After CCFC partners with the Association for Booksellers for Children to protest product placement for Cover Girl Makeup in Kathy’s Book, its publishers drop the advertising from the paperback edition.
  

2007

• As a result of our Federal Trade Commission complaint against Brainy Baby and Disney’s Baby Einstein for false and deceptive marketing, both companies agree to stop making claims that their videos are educational for babies.

• After eighteen months of negotiations, CCFC and the Center for Science in the Public Interest announce a settlement to a pending law suit with Kellogg, putting an end to all of their elementary and preschool marketing, placing restrictions on television and Internet advertising, and limiting the company’s use of licensed characters like Shrek

• Working with local activists and parents, we successfully stop BusRadio—a company that plans on “taking student targeted marketing to the next level”—in school districts around the country.

• We help draft legislation and organize support for a Massachusetts bill that would end all marketing in schools and on-school grounds.  Using our bill as a model, CCFC members help introduce similar legislation in Vermont in 2008.

• Our campaign to fire Shrek from his role as spokescharacter for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launches a national discussion about the use of licensed characters to market junk to children.

2006

• Alerted by a parent, CCFC launches a successful letter-writing campaign after Hasbro announced plans for a new line of dolls—for girls as young as six—based on the Pussycat Dolls, a real-life burlesque troupe turned singing group. 

• Our public letter, signed by dozens of state and local politicians and community leaders—including the mayors of both Boston and Cambridge—convinces the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority to institute a policy prohibiting the advertising of violent video games on trains and buses.

• CCFC ignites a national debate about the questionable educational value of screen viewing for babies and raises awareness about the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation of no screen time for children under two.

2005

• McDonald’s drops a plan to pay rap artists to promote Big Macs in their songs after CCFC’s protest receives international press coverage.

• Joining with labor and environmental groups, CCFC helps persuade the pension giant TIAA-CREF to remove Coca-Cola from its Social Choice Account.  It is the first time that marketing junk food to children is cited as a reason for removing a company from a socially-screened fund.

• At a major FTC conference on food marketing to children, CCFC is the only organization on the program to speak out about the failure of industry self-regulation. 

2000-2004

• Working with environmental groups, CCFC’s convinces the United States Youth Soccer Association to end its promotional partnership with ChemLawn.

• CCFC holds its first congressional briefing on marketing to children.

• CCFC protests the Golden Marble Awards—the advertising industry’s celebration of marketing to kids—in New York City in 2000.  The following year, Scholastic ends its sponsorship of the awards after a letter-writing campaign.  In 2003, after three years of protests, the awards are cancelled.

• In response to growing concerns about the impact of marketing on children, Susan Linn and Diane Levin—along with Enola Aird, Priscilla Hambrick-Dixon, Allen Kanner, Velma LaPoint, and Alvin F. Poussiant—form Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children.  The Coalition is renamed the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in 2004.