Marketing to Kids

Marketing to children is a contentious practice. Food marketing, in particular, has caught the eye of federal agencies, due to the rising rates of childhood obesity. Food marketers reach children through a variety of means: packaging, product placement, advergaming, licensing of children's television characters and others.

According to a joint Federal Trade Commission / Department of Health and Human Services workshop report, the food industry spent $10 billion to $12 billion in 2002 on marketing to children. Examples include:

• Paying retailers to place products at locations accessible to children.
• Including toys with food, such the toys included in McDonald’s Happy Meals.
• Linking food with popular children's characters, books, toys and clothing, such as selling a Barbie doll that wears a Jell-O t-shirt or marketing SpongeBob SquarePants-shaped Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

A growing area, as noted in the report, is digital media, including web sites and branded video games (often integrated). These sites feature interactive games that promote food products (advergames), as well as contest, music, videos, downloadable items and more.

The report recommends a number of steps that food marketers should take to reign in marketing to children. However, since the focus is obesity prevention, the recommendations call for, for example, more nutritious food choices or creating smaller portion-sized packaging.

While these steps can help to lessen some of the impacts of marketing to children (by at least marketing better food options to children), they don't address the real underlying problem: that marketing to children is unethical. As the Center for a New American Dream notes, "New research suggests that aggressive marketing to kids contributes not only to excessive materialism, but also to a host of psychological and behavioral problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, childhood obesity, eating disorders, increased violence, and family stress."

So, while the federal efforts are a step in the right direction in pushing industry to market better products to kids, they are off track in that they still enable marketing to the wrong audience. Leave the kids alone. Let their parents deal with the pros and cons of consumerism.