Tug of War in Food Marketing to Children

Stephanie Clifford

The New York Times

July 30, 2008

THE Federal Trade Commission issued a report Tuesday detailing the pervasiveness of food marketing to children, and a coalition of food companies responded with its own report arguing they had made progress on the issue by self-policing.

The F.T.C.’s report was conducted as part of a Congressional inquiry into rising childhood obesity rates. It found that food companies had spent $1.6 billion to market their products to children and teenagers in 2006.

Makers of carbonated beverages spent the most on marketing to children and teenagers, followed by fast-food restaurants and producers of breakfast cereals. And the major advertising platform was television.

The food companies’ report, also released Tuesday, detailed the progress made by a coalition of 14 major food companies, including Coca-Cola and Kellogg, that was formed in 2006 to fend off government regulation.

Members of the coalition, called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative and run by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, pledge either to stop aiming ads at children or to promote only what the council calls “better-for-you products” in ads directed at children.

•

The F.T.C. seemed to applaud the progress that the coalition had made. “The committee’s primary recommendation is all food and beverage companies adopt and adhere to” nutritional standards for products marketed to children, said Lydia Parnes, director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, at a news conference in Washington. She said that joining the coalition would be “a useful first step” for companies.

But critics of the self-regulatory approach said they were troubled by the lack of industrywide definitions on what advertising to children entailed and on what “better” food meant.

“In the Better Business Bureau program, the companies themselves determine what is better food, the companies themselves determine what is children’s advertising. The companies determine all these things; there’s not even a real uniformity in what these decisions are,” said Robert Kesten, the executive director of the Center for Screen-Time Awareness, a Washington-based group that aims to limit media influence.

The business bureau’s report showed that companies’ pledges had resulted in slight modifications to the products they sell to children and how they sell those products.

The Campbell Soup Company, for example, has stopped featuring Chicken Noodle Soup on its Web sites directed at children. Chicken and Stars, Healthy Request Chicken Noodle and reduced-sodium Chicken Noodle, all of which meet Campbell’s nutritional standards for children, can be featured, however.

Cadbury Adams has stopped marketing Bubblicious gum to children, said a spokeswoman, Luisa Girotto.

Kellogg’s has reformulated several products, including the cold cereals Apple Jacks, Froot Loops and Corn Pops, so that they meet the company’s declared nutrition requirements for children, a Kellogg’s spokeswoman said.

And Burger King started offering a new Kids Meal, featuring macaroni and cheese, that meets its nutritional criteria. (Its children’s menu continues to feature a double hamburger, however, with 420 calories and 22 grams of fat.)

The business bureau’s report covered changes made in the last half of 2007. The timeline for meeting the pledges varied. Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Hershey, Kraft Foods, Mars and Unilever were to put their programs fully into effect by the last half of 2007, while Burger King, Cadbury Adams, General Mills, Kellogg, McDonald’s, and PepsiCo will only start adopting their programs in that period. ConAgra Foods and Nestlé only recently joined the coalition.

The F.T.C. report was based on internal data from 2006 that 44 food and drink companies and fast-food restaurants were ordered to provide.

Among the findings: About $870 million in marketing spending was directed at children under 12, while $1 billion was directed at teenagers (those figures include $300 million worth of marketing that was aimed at both groups).

Still, the agency’s estimate of $1.6 billion being spent on marketing to children and teenagers was far below where other estimates had been, notably the $10 billion figure that the Institute of Medicine has been using. (The F.T.C. said it excluded nonfood marketing and advertising that it did not see as aimed at children, like coupons.)

Because the companies’ efforts did not get under way until 2007, none of the shifts the report detailed were reflected in the agency’s numbers.

In the report issued by the business bureau, companies’ commitments vary widely.

Each company defined for itself what “better for you” meant. Kraft has decided its crackers have to have fewer than 100 calories and 290 milligrams of sodium in a serving, while ConAgra said its canned pasta had to have fewer than 350 calories and 750 milligrams of sodium.

The companies were also able to define for themselves what advertising directed at children meant. Coca-Cola and Cadbury Adams, for example, consider a commercial whose audience is composed 50 percent or more of children under 12 to be marketing to children. Mars’s definition is stricter: a children’s audience is one that is composed 25 percent or more of children under 12.

The bureau gave some examples of companies faltering. Campbell and Unilever, for example, had promised to advertise only better-for-you products to children. But both had neglected to remove products on Web sites aimed at children that did not meet their nutrition guidelines. Both companies have since fixed the problem, the bureau said.

Elaine D. Kolish, the director of the companies’ effort, said the different standards were reasonable.

“This is self-regulation to begin with and we think that this marketplace, competition-driven approach actually is really good for consumers and for children under 12,” she said. “This way, more companies can participate because they have some flexibility in setting the standards that takes into account what kind of foods they sell.”

Of course, even if companies do cut down on their marketing to children, it does not mean that children will stop seeing the advertisements or eating the products.

•

Prime-time programming generally does not meet any of the companies’ criteria for child-focused programming, but more than two million children regularly watch “American Idol,” for example, where Coca-Cola is a major sponsor. (“ ‘American Idol’ is family entertainment. It is not programming primarily directed at children under 12,” a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, Diana Garza Ciarlante, said in an e-mail message.)

And one easy solution for companies is to take products that have been marketed to children and start marketing them to mothers.

Kellogg’s has been trying to reformulate its Pop-Tarts, for example, but has not succeeded in creating a better-for-you version. By the end of the year, “if we can’t do it, we will shift the target for that product to adults, whether it’s moms or whomever makes sense,” said a Kellogg’s spokeswoman, Kris Charles.

That is unlikely to satisfy critics.

“It’s the marketing industry policing itself, and as is shown over and over and over again, that’s problematic,” said Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.