It’s not just parents who are concerned with the ethics of corporate marketing. Four St. Paul students have been named Youth Advocates of the Year by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The group, members of the Ramsey Tobacco Coalition, were honored last week in Washington, D.C.

When the students –  Brian Bell, Shanicee Dillon, Calitta Jones and Jeremiah Carter — discovered that stores in their neighborhood were selling candy cigarettes, bubble gum called “Big League Chew” and novelty lighters, they decided to do something about it. They met with St. Paul City Council Member Melvin Carter, who agreed to introduce an ordinance banning the products if the group helped: The students had to  conduct a community assessment of the problem, educate the other council members, and rally support for their presentation in the council chambers.

So they did. And as a result, the city council voted unanimously to ban the sale of candy “tobacco” products. St. Paul is the first city in the country to do so.

Since the ordinance went into effect, the youth have helped the city monitor stores for compliance and assisted in media and educational campaigns. The group currently is working to increase the tax rate for small cigars and to stop tobacco industry funding of nonprofit organizations that work with youth.

The Ramsey Tobacco Coalition works to reduce the harm caused by tobacco in Ramsey County. Members target youth access via tobacco-free school grounds policies, tobacco-free park policies, tobacco-free policies for clubs and youth-serving agencies and Ramsey County and St. Paul smoke-free workplace laws.

Seth Stevenson at Slate.com reviews the FTC’s advertising literacy game for kids, Admongo. He echoes some of my thoughts and adds to the discussion by talking with Susan Linn.

The whole project seems relatively harmless. . . . Yet Admongo has its detractors. Two primary complaints: 1) The game is insufficiently critical of the broad, pernicious influence of marketing on modern American culture. 2) This reluctance to speak hard truths stems from the fact that the FTC partnered with PR behemoth Fleishman-Hillard and educational mega-corporation Scholastic to develop and distribute Admongo materials.

Other evidence that marketing to kids is hitting the mainstreamish media:

Marketing Junk Food to Children [DailyKos]
McDonald’s Happy Meals Banned in Santa Clara County, California [Treehugger]
Is the end of the Happy Meal in Sight [The Guardian]

It took a national public health crisis. But it looks like marketing to children has finally found a home in the nation’s spotlight.

The May issue of Scientific American tackles it head-on with Underage, Overweight: The Federal Government Needs to Halt the Marketing of Unhealthy Foods to Kids. Citing the recent study that linked television commercials – not simply sitting in front of a TV but the commercials themselves – with obesity, the editors at Scientific American call on the FDA to create and enforce mandatory standards for food and beverage marketing to children.

The estimated cost of treating obesity-related ailments in adults was $147 billion for 2009. With the health care system already faltering, allowing companies to decide for themselves whether to peddle junk food to kids is a fox-and-henhouse policy this country simply cannot afford any longer.

Scientists and parents and health professionals and teachers are waking up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, corporations shouldn’t be spending billions of dollars to convince kids to want things that are bad for them.

And maybe, just maybe, since corporations are not going to stop on their own, it’s time for someone to step in.

Agencies who should be doing something now are instead putting their time and effort into advertising literacy campaigns. The FTC recently unveiled Admongo, an online game to teach kids how to decipher the very ads that shouldn’t be directed at them in the first place.  Why not just go after the advertisers? Seems the FTC was careful not to alienate any corporate campaign donors when creating Admongo, in fact, they’ve partnered with Scholastic, the single largest offender of bringing corporate advertising directly into the classroom via licensed-character-laden books. [Read also: Government Program Teaches Kids to Gaze at Ads Better]

Thanks for the help, FTC.

Yet we know the climate is changing. Our friends at Cynopsis Media recently talked to some cable network types to get their sense of what they expected to happen this year in advertising. Jackie Kulesza from Starcom:

There are a lot of factors that play into kids marketplace. There are discussions outside of our advertising world in Washington about this space and it continues to be a concern from a regulatory perspective. This administration might be bringing a different tone.

But don’t tell this to the corporations and their taxpayer subsidized marketing and advertising departments. They want to buy what Adweek is selling:

Kids want what they want when they want it. The little centers-of-our-universe can beg and plead for their essentials — toys, snacks and TV shows — with unfettered determination. Turns out that parents, television networks and marketers are working double time to oblige.

Nice. This is from Adweek’s What Kids Want: A Special Issue. It continues:

Marketers too are seeking to box out competitors by altering food products to reduce the dreaded salt, sugar and fat content in kids snacks. Are they doing too little too late to make an impact on kids health? Are their efforts just a smoke and mirrors move aimed at duping parents and kids to buy more bad food? Depends who you ask.

Asked and answered.

Image courtesy ford.