Campaigners and industry advocates agree that the recently-published report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US on the marketing of food to children is one of the most thorough examinations of the current landscape of this area of food promotion. However, the report’s strong endorsement of self-regulation has not surprisingly divided opinion. Ben Cooper reports.
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As the US food industry digests the findings of a report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the marketing of food to children and adolescents, there will probably be a strong feeling of vindication among those in the industry who pushed most vigorously for industry-led voluntary action back in 2006.
While the report far from lets the industry off the hook, the FTC remains supportive of self-regulation and specifically commends the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), an industry programme launched in 2006. The threat of regulatory intervention, if there at all, is extremely veiled.
But there is nevertheless plenty for the industry to ponder. Having subpoenaed companies to gain confidential information, the FTC’s report, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation, stated that some 44 food and beverage companies spent US$1.6bn in promoting their products to children under 12 and adolescents aged 12 to 17 in the US in 2006. The report said that around $870m was spent on child-directed marketing, and just over $1bn on marketing to adolescents, with about $300m overlapping the two age groups.
These expenditure figures are deemed to be underestimates by campaigners – some put the actual figure as high as $10bn – but activists acknowledged that the report had shown a grasp of the subtleties of the contemporary landscape of food promotion, which the FTC said was “dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and Internet”. It also added that campaigns often involve cross-promotion with movies or TV, and that consumers might also be directed to “advergames”, free downloads such as screen savers and ring tones, podcasts, and online video episodes known as “webisodes”.
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By GlobalDataThe thoroughness of the report drew praise from even the most hardened activists. Notwithstanding the reservation that the information dates from 2006, and two years is a long time in the fast-evolving world of consumer advertising, Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, commended the FTC report. “While there are certainly a number of things that have happened since 2006, it is the most complete picture we’ve had to date of all the different techniques that marketers are using and how they reinforce each other,” Golin told just-food.
While, like other campaigners, Golin was critical that the FTC had not gone further in its recommendations for industry action, he welcomed the FTC’s call for unified nutritional standards among companies making pledges about marketing to children, and uniformity in how those companies define children’s media. Golin said this would be “a very minimal first step” but worthwhile. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) also called for companies to adopt “a strong set of national nutrition standards and apply them to all their marketing”.
Whether or not the report’s contribution to the debate is as “path-breaking” as FTC chairman William Kovacic contends, the food industry can have few illusions about the regulator’s awareness of the critical pressure points in this debate.
Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at CSPI, called for industry to act on the FTC’s findings and do more. “Companies are starting to address marketing to children but if they don’t step up their efforts, Congress and the next administration will need to do it for them,” she said.
However, this remark possibly overstates the idea that the report may carry behind it the genuine threat of imminent legislation. Elaine Kolish, director of the CFBAI, pointed out that legislation in this area would raise First Amendment issues and would be problematic to introduce. But more crucially, the FTC has once more exhibited a strong commitment to the idea of self-regulation.
“I think the FTC’s report and their statement at the press conference has been very, very supportive of self-regulation,” Kolish told just-food. “At the same time, they of course do have some suggestions about how they think the programme can be improved and those are the suggestions that we will be looking at and addressing with the participants in the next several months. But I don’t think anyone could look at that and have any doubt that they believe that self-regulation has the potential to achieve significant change and is an appropriate way to go right now.”
Interestingly, the CFBAI issued its own progress report on exactly the same day as the FTC report was published, announcing also that Nestlé USA had joined the scheme, bringing the total number of companies in the programme to 14. The CFBAI report stated that, of the 14 participants, four companies had pledged not to advertise food and beverage products to children, while nine had pledged to advertise only better-for-you products in advertising primarily directed to children under 12.
The CFBAI report focused primarily on Campbell Soup Co., Coca-Cola, Hershey, Kraft Foods, Mars and Unilever US, the six participants which had implemented pledges between July and December 2007, concluding that these participants had successfully implemented their pledges not to advertise to children under 12 or only advertise products that meet specific better-for-you criteria.
While the FTC report made some recommendations for further action by industry, it commended the CFBAI, stating that the industry had taken “important steps to encourage better nutrition and fitness among the nation’s children” by changing the mix of food and beverage advertising messages directed to children under 12 and encouraging healthier eating and better physical fitness.
In addition to calling on all companies marketing food to children under 12 to adopt meaningful, nutrition-based standards for marketing their products extending to all advertising and promotional techniques, the report also recommends that companies should improve the nutritional profiles of products marketed to children and adolescents; cease the in-school promotion of products that do not meet nutritional standards; and improve the quality and consistency of the nutritional criteria adopted for better-for-you products. It also calls for more media and entertainment companies to restrict the licensing of their characters to healthier foods and beverages that are marketed to children.
California-based pressure group Children Now pointed out that media companies have so far been absent from the CFBAI. “While there have been self-regulatory efforts, they are insufficient to address the issue. Media companies are largely missing from the equation,” said Patti Miller, vice president at Children Now. “The media companies have not stepped forward to play a role in protecting children from the advertising of unhealthy food products.”
When asked about this point, the CFBAI’s Kolish told just-food that media companies would be welcomed into the programme.
