Food Activist Targets Gatorade Ad in New York AG Complaint
Food activist and blogger Nancy Huehnergarth has reportedly filed a complaint
with the New York attorney general (AG) over a purportedly deceptive “viral
advertising campaign” from 2013 featuring a mobile game that promoted
Gatorade® as a performance enhancer while denigrating water as “the enemy
of performance.” According to a news source, gamers using the app navigated
an avatar through an obstacle course and picked up bottles of Gatorade® to
increase his speed while avoiding drops of water that slowed him down.
Huehnergarth, who co-founded the New York State Healthy Eating and
Physical Activity Alliance and was instrumental in getting “junk” food
removed from school vending machines in her community, apparently filed
the complaint because she believed the campaign provided an inaccurate
message to children. “It’s preying on youth while slipping past parents
who don’t necessarily police a mobile device quite as carefully as they do
a computer. I think it’s chutzpah to the highest degree,” she said. Parent
company PepsiCo responded in a statement, “The mobile game, Bolt! from
Gatorade was designed to educate athletes about the scientifically proven
concept that sport drinks can have advantages when it comes to athletic
performance because they contain carbohydrates that provide fuel and
electrolytes that aid in hydration.”
Center for Science in the Public Interest Executive Director Michael Jacobson
was quoted as saying, “I think the basic strategy is to make people think
they will become better athletes if they drink Gatorade, but the average
consumer’s health and wallet would be better off if they stuck with water.” The
game evidently won an Interactive Advertising Bureau Mixx award for mobile
marketing and has been nominated for several others. It attracted some 4
million Facebook likes and was downloaded 2.3 million times. While the game
is no longer available, it was reportedly played more than 83 million times;
nearly three-fourths of the players were between the ages of 13 and 24. See
ABCNews.com, January 9, 2014.
Issue 510
