I would so love to attend this FTC forum in D.C. that I am almost willing to snack on [fill in name of food industry sponsor]’s delicious products all day long. While standing in the front of the room. And passing out coupons.  

FTC Announces Agenda for December 15 Forum to Explore Food Marketing to Children
Will Address Developments in Self-Regulation; Report on Recommended Nutritional Standards

The Federal Trade Commission announced the agenda and speakers for its December 15, 2009 public forum titled “Sizing Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity.”

The forum participants will present new research on the impact of various food advertising techniques on children and discuss the statutory and constitutional issues surrounding governmental regulation of food marketing. Panelists also will address the food and entertainment industries’ self-regulatory efforts and implementation of the recommendations in the FTC’s 2008 report, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation. In addition, the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children – comprised of representatives from the FTC, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Department of Agriculture – will report on the status of recommended nutritional standards for foods marketed to children, followed by a Town Hall discussion.

An agenda for the forum is available. Updated information will be posted as it becomes available.

Read the rest of the press release.

A thrilling success for CCFC:

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

My super-short history of the Baby Einstein video saga.

See how this advocacy thing works?

And remember when Change.org pointed out that even though it says so on the box, Fruit Loops aren’t healthy? And now, after the FDA agreed, Kellogg’s is going to stop saying that.

See? Isn’t this fun?

Let’s continue with Scholastic. Not the old Scholastic problems, but a new one: Scholastic bans book because author refuses to change same-sex parent characters into heterosexuals.

May be time to write Scholastic or, better yet, reconsider that Scholastic book fair at your child’s school. See CCFC’s Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs.

From Change.org: 

The nation’s largest food manufacturers, including Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, ConAgra and PepsiCo, want you to believe that Froot Loops and other unhealthy foods are “Smart Choices.” And they have somehow convinced representatives from Tufts University, Baylor College of Medicine, the American Dietetic Association, and the American Diabetes Association to back them up.

The new “Smart Choices” program — an industry-backed marketing ploy — puts a green check mark on products that are determined to be “smarter food and beverage choices.”  But the choices selected are anything but healthy.

Dr. Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said in a New York Times article that she supported giving Froot Loops the green check mark because compared to feeding your children doughnuts for breakfast “Froot Loops is a better choice.”

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Cereal is 41% sugar. There is nothing “smart” about Froot Loops or other foods packed with sugar. 

The reality is that the food industry is using the Smart Choices program to deceive parents and other shoppers into buying the very food that has led to a costly epidemic of diabetes and obesity — and researchers like Dr. Kennedy are abetting this deception by associating themselves and their respective institutions with the program.

This is outrageous.

Send a letter today and tell all four doctors supporting the Smart Choices program to stop shilling for Kellogg’s. They, and the leaders of their respective institutions, need to hear that you think it is wrong for them to support any program that gives sugary cereals and other unhealthy foods a stamp of approval as healthy choices.

Sign the petition.

Firm perfects smart marketing approach to kids and parents explains how the really smart marketers do it.

To begin, create a product line that isn’t needed or necessary: Skin care for children.

. . . a good niche product geared to a relatively new market with few competitors.

It’s a new market because this company (mysteriously not named in the article) made it up. They invented the market. Thy have no competitors because the Unnamed Company made it up first.

And now, the strategy. The Unnamed Company:

. . . speaks on a kid-appropriate level by using “fun” adjectives such as “friendly,” “sunny,” “happy,” and “funny” to describe the products . . . .

. . . appeals to kids’ sensibilities by packaging the products in bright colors and designs . . . .

. . . added entertainment value to the product line with a CD of silly rhymes and songs to serve as mnemonic devices for developing good skin-care habits.

. . . [created a website], providing a forum for learning more about the ingredients, including the “toxic bad guys” found in everyday products. . . . [and] printable checklists for kids to earn stars for performing their skin-care regimen.

Now that’s how you get kids to ask for and parents to buy a completely unnecessary product.

Here’s another one: How do you get a Mom to buy a knife for her toddler?

They strategically placed the words [Kiddy and cutlery] in discrete places where Moms aren’t likely to see them seeing as they are concentrating on getting out of the store before their kid has a melt down.  

Katherine has a point: Even if it’s not sharp, why would Gerber even consider selling a little toddler knife?

Gerber and Kellogg’s must have attended the same product development workshop: Create and Market Products to Confuse Small Children for Fun and Profit.

Blogger and neighborhood activist Ed Kohler passed along this gem to me:

Really, Kellogg’s? Lego fruit snacks for children that look exactly like the Legos with the CHOKING HAZARD NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THREE on every box?

Influencial Marketing Blog:

Every once in a while, you see an example of a campaign or product that demonstrates a little too clearly the negative side of marketing and makes you just a little embarassed about your career choice.

Kellogg’s was one of the first companies to join the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. The participants have pledged to alter how they market food to kids — including only advertising foods that meet certain nutritional guidelines and cutting back on the licensed characters.

Kellogg’s says it has to honor its existing contracts, so I’m guessing that the Legos’ contract is one of those that goes into 2009. It looks like they shouldn’t be advertising Lego Fun Snacks to kids at all, since its 13 grams of sugar per serving violates their 12-gram limit.

Unfortunately, the pledge doesn’t extend to marketing really stupid products. Kellogg’s, exactly how do you defend this one?