Rudd Center Publishes Study on Point-of-Sale Marketing
Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has published a study alleging that the “number of products with youth-oriented cross-promotions increased by 78 percent” between 2006 and 2008. Jennifer Harris, et al., “Marketing foods to children and adolescents: licensed characters and other promotions on packaged foods in the supermarket,” Public Health Nutrition, March 2010. After examining 397
products gathered on three separate occasions from one large U.S. supermarket, researchers reported that (i) “71% of cross-promotions involved third-party licensed characters”; (ii) “57% appealed primarily to children under 12 years of age”; (iii) “the use of other forms of promotion increased from 5% of the total in 2006 to 53% in 2008”; and (iv) “promotions targeting pre-school and general audiences increased from 23% to 54% of the total.” In addition, they wrote, “Only 18% of products met accepted nutrition standards for foods sold to youth, and nutritional quality declined during the period examined.”
The authors specifically criticized cross-promotions from “seven food manufacturers who had publicly pledged to reduce food marketing to children at the launch of the CBBB [Council of Better Business Bureau] initiative,” which asked companies to “shift the mix of advertising messages directed to children under 12 to encourage healthier dietary choices and healthier lifestyles.” Although the use of the third-party licensed characters and promotions targeting children did decline from 2006 to 2008, the study purportedly registered “an increase in most other types of promotional partners and promotions targeting preschoolers and a broader youth audience.” Moreover, according to the report, “the overall use of youth-oriented promotions on packaging by food companies that have signed CBBB pledges did not decline significantly in proportion to the total, and the nutritional value of the products promoted did not improve.”
The Rudd Center is calling on the Federal Trade Commission and food manufacturers to use these results to improve the scope and content of self-regulatory efforts. In particular, the study authors recommend that “food industry pledges should extend to marketing that targets all youth to avoid simply shifting advertising efforts to a broader audience that continues to include significant numbers of children of adolescents.” As they ultimately concluded, “A continued absence of real progress in the marketing environment is likely to reinforce support for more direct interventions, including government regulations to enforce reductions in unhealthy food marketing to youth.”
