Kellogg has brushed off criticism for its Coco-Pops outdoor campaign that encourages children to eat the chocolate-flavoured cereal after school.
A spokesperson for the cereal giant told just-food yesterday (3 March) that it had received a number of complaints about the UK advertising campaign but was sanguine about the criticism.
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“Some people supported it, some people didn’t like it. That’s the nature of the beast,” the spokesperson said.
The firm declined to comment on how many complaints it had received or the nature of the complaints but The Children’s Food Campaign has questioned whether Kellogg should be promoting a chocolate cereal classified as “high in sugar” as an afternoon snack.
The campaigners pointed to Kellogg’s role in the UK government’s Change4Life anti-obesity campaign,
The advert shows the brand’s monkey character in a school uniform, with the strapline ‘Ever thought of Coco Pops after school?’.
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By GlobalDataThe campaigners are calling for parents to compose their own slogan to appear in an alternative version of the advert on its website and suggests that parents follow this with a complaint to Kellogg about the adverts.
Meanwhile, the outdoor campaign was only set to run for two weeks but the adverts are said to be still running in some UK locations. Kellogg admitted there had been an “overlap” in the campaign.
“[The campaign] was meant to come to an end ten days ago but there is sometimes an overlap in when an advert finishes and when new inserts are placed. That is the nature of outdoor advertising and in some locations you can expect an overlap,” the spokesperson said.
Kellogg said it would continue to the run the television advertising campaign for Coco Pops, for which it had not yet received any complaints.
“The complaints were in relation to the outdoor campaign,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to run the TV ad…we’ve had no complaints about it. We do lots of TV campaigns all the time and some people like them, some people don’t like them but we’ve had no complaints about that.”
