British Newspaper Reports Scheme to Recruit Youth Marketers
“Children are being paid up to £25 a week to promote sugary soft drinks and other products through social networking sites and playground chat,” claims a February 15, 2010, report published in the Daily Mail. Titled “Child ‘Mini-Marketers’ Paid by Junk Food Firms to Secretly Push Products Among Their Friends,” the article focuses on an advertising website, Dubit Insider, that offers vouchers worth £25 and free samples to children who sign on to become “brand ambassadors.” The Daily Mail alleges that this website recruits children ages 7 to 24 to “promote brands, products and services” among their peer group, suggesting that Dubit members can use their experience to enhance their college applications. “Companies are not just stalking kids online,” one consumer advocate was quoted as saying. “Close on half a million young people in the UK alone have been enlisted by big youth brands, and that’s the figure from just one recruitment agency. Kids are regularly signed up through the Internet to be ‘insiders,’ ‘informers,’ and ‘lifestyle representatives’ for big corporations.”
In addition, the newspaper lambastes the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) for partnering with Dubit on an initiative to spread the word about the importance of a good diet. “This followed disturbing research showing that many teen girls and boys are being starved of key nutrients. They were consuming too much junk, such as sugary soft drinks and snack foods, and more than a third were overweight,” opines the report, which also criticizes several food and beverage manufacturers for using Dubit in their word-of-mouth marketing campaigns.
