One sure way to gage the progress in the fight against marketing to children is to see what articles and blog posts come across our RSS feed. Here’s what we’ve seen in just the last couple weeks:

Facebook Wants Children — Yours — to Boost Ad Sales [BNET]

Food Makers Won’t Leave Your Kids Alone [Rodale.com]

Marketing Junk Food To Kids Is Evil [Care2]

Marketing to Tweens – making our kids grow up too fast [NJ.com]

Movies still sell smoking to our kids [WLTribune.com]

Are Advergames Fair Game for Kids? [Brand Channel]

Curbing Junk Food Marketing to Children [Eat Drink Better]

Time to crack down on child-focused ads [SFGate.com]

Is McDonald’s Betraying Our Kids By Barraging Them With Junk Food Ads? [Huffington Post*]

Children’s Internet Games — Health and Obesity [Patch.com]

McDonald’s aggressively markets to kids [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

Maybe Trix aren’t for Kids [insideawake]

Kid-baiting ads have gone too far [Salon]

Food, Advertising Reps Blast Proposed Guidelines for Marketing to Kids [Fox News]

*We have a no link policy for the Huffington Post. This is why. [video]

In the great debate over who’s responsible for kids’ unhealthy diets and related illnesses, here’s one that points to corporate marketing: Products that are labeled healthy for kids really aren’t:

Parents shouldn’t look to the labels on the front of food package for guidance on picking the healthiest products for their kids. Claiming Health: Front-of-Package Labeling of Children’s Food looked at packages with front of package labeling–symbols that identify healthier products–and found that 84% of products studied didn’t meet basic nutritional standards.

Consider parents who are in a rush at the grocery store — can we really blame them for choosing a product that their kids clamor for and is good for them to boot?

It’s not the first time front-of-packaging labels and health claims have come under fire. Meant to inform consumers, most nutritional marketing does just the opposite. There’s a slew of competing symbols, labels and check marks that have been developed by food manufacturers to sell their goods, without little to no oversight.

Babysitter Approved: A Minneapolis firm, Haberman, is asking consumers to identify marketing campaigns “that truly ADD value to our world.” ADD or DELETE also asks companies and agencies to take a look at what they’re producing:

We think the advertising and communications industry needs to redirect some of its creative firepower towards creating positive change instead of more distasteful or wasteful advertisements. Take the 5% challenge – devote some of your business time, marketing expertise and resources to ADDing.

The campaign’s focus on Super Bowl advertising reminds me of this slide — now slightly outdated — I’ve used in parent education presentations showing the yearly increases in public education spending, Super Bowl ad revenue, and the amount spent marketing to children:

World governments are being asked to monitor advertising directed at children in an effort to curb non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease — a growing cause of premature death in poor countries.

From the World Health Organization:

21 January, 2011 | Geneva — Children throughout the world are exposed to marketing of foods high in fat, sugar or salt, which increases the potential of younger generations developing noncommunicable diseases during their lives. The World Health Organization is urging countries to take action to reduce the exposure of such marketing to children by implementing a set of internationally-endorsed measures.

Television advertising is responsible for a large share of the marketing of unhealthy foods and, according to systematic reviews of evidence, advertisements influence children’s food preferences, purchase requests and consumption patterns.

In May 2010, WHO Member States endorsed a new set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children. The recommendations call for national and international action to reduce the exposure of children to marketing messages that promote foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt, and to reduce the use of powerful techniques to market these foods to children. . . .

WHO data shows that 43 million pre-school children worldwide are obese or overweight. Scientific reviews have also shown that a significant portion of television advertising that children are exposed to promotes “noncore” food products which are low in nutritional value. . . .

Preparations are ongoing for the first United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of NCDs, which will be held on 19-20 September 2011 in New York. Heads of state and government are being invited to the High-level Meeting, which will focus on the health, development and socioeconomic impacts of NCDs, particularly in the developing world.

Image courtesy {N}Duran

A new study verifies that while very young children are adept at using the internet, many do not recognize ads while others are unable to distinguish them from website content. According to MediaPost,

. . . children — especially those under the age of six — were unaware of the concept of advertising, while older kids may know about ads but couldn’t always distinguish them. “Even when words such as ‘ad’ or ‘advertisement’ marked the ads, some of the children still clicked on them, thinking they were legitimate content,” states the report.

The report recommends:

– ads be more prominent and large enough for children to see in display ads and explicitly state when an ad appears at the start of a video;

– ads aimed at children avoid calls to action (like “Click Here!”) because they draw kids’ attention away from content without knowing they are clicking on an ad;

– that ads have consistent placement on the right side of a page to help kids distinguish between ads and content; and

– when kids click on ads, they are warned that they are leaving the site with options to continue or go back.

The study also made recommendations on how advertisers could make better use of their ad dollars on kids’ websites, which shall not be reported on this blog.

The report was issued by the Nielsen Norman Group.

Dr. Daniel Wheeler was so kind as to share with me his dissertation from his doctoral program at the University of Central Florida titled The Effectiveness of the Dove Evolution Film as a One Shot Media Literacy Treatment.  The purpose of the study was to “test the effectiveness of the Dove Evolution film as a one-shot media literacy treatment to change sociocultural attitudes toward appearance.”

Many of us were skeptical of the award-winning Evolution ad since it became a viral sensation a few years ago (see Girls, pay no attention to the naked supermodel sitting next to you, or, Dove’s at it again).

And as it turns out it really wasn’t effective. At all. From Wheeler:

A modified version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ-3) was administered as a pretest and posttest, measuring four variables such as awareness and internalization of the media ideal, pressure to achieve the media ideal, and desire to be athletic. It was hypothesized that the treatment would raise awareness but lower internalization, pressure and desire to be athletic. Although none of the hypotheses were supported, there were statistically significant changes. Contrary to expectations, the awareness measure decreased and the pressure score increased.

In other words, viewing the film actually increased scores measuring pressure to obtain the media ideal, and the scores measuring internalization — the extent to which one accepts society’s norms of thinness and beauty and modifies behavior to achieve it — remained the same.

Wheeler also comments on the embarrassing truth that corporate giant Unilever owns both Dove and hyper-sexualized Axe (see Dove’s successful marketing cycle, guaranteed: Advertise products, repair damage to girls’ self-esteem. Repeat.):

However, the recognition that Dove Soap is a company subsidiary of a corporation whose other subsidiary, Axe men’s products, use sexual advertising, leads to the conclusion that the purpose of the Dove Evolution film is to make a profit for the company. By appealing to customers who perceive themselves as ordinary-looking women, Dove can sell beauty products to a wider range of customers.

Media literacy, then, has far-reaching applications, including recognizing commercial advertising disguised as a public service.

Emphasis mine. Which is why the Dove Self-Esteem Workshops still rub me the wrong way. If you argue that at least it’s a step in the right direction, I’d suggest that you read Kate Harding’s Body image revolution postponed at Salon.com and remember that, according to Unilever, when girls with self-esteem become adults they’ll need to lighter their skin, get rid of those wrinkles and lose some weight.

So even though the Evolution film didn’t enlighten us enough about the beauty industry, at least it helped sell more product. Which was Dove’s goal in the first place.

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.

Kudos to all the smart parents who knew that Baby Einstein videos would not make their babies smarter:

If anyone believed Disney had cued into a magic, painless way to create babies guaranteed to test into the Gifted and Talented Education program by third grade, their children’s bigger problem wasn’t in how many videos they watched, it was in their parents’ DNA.

Moms and Dads who fell for Disney’s marketing must be really stupid, boy, because even Disney knows they never claimed Baby Einstein was educational.  I mean, just because something is providing learning opportunities doesn’t mean it’s educational:

Our videos — we call them ‘Video Board Books¨ — combine age-appropriate visual stimulation with developmentally important sounds, such as foreign language, poetry and classical music. Unlike traditional entertainment programming, our Video Board Books are designed to provide both quality learning opportunities based on sound teaching practices and unique viewing enjoyment.

That doesn’t mean they’re educational! Duh!

Or who would possibly believe silly marketing copy that claims Baby Einstein products are backed up by research?

Research has shown that humans acquire knowledge through three channels of learning — seeing, hearing and doing. We develop products in various media, such as video, audio, print and toys that offer a range of visual, auditory and tactile experiences.

And what dummies would fall for statements such as Baby Einstein contributes to increased brain capacity – especially if they appeared in a company press release. Sheesh!

And since the FTC brought no action against Baby Einstein, intelligent parents can clearly see that Disney was never making false claims and therefore, their marketing wouldn’t change at all.

Upon careful review of the matter, including non-public information submitted to the staff, [the FTC] determined not to recommend enforcement action at this time. Among the factors we considered are changes made recently to the Baby Einstein website — the removal of numerous testimonials that had previously appeard on the website and changes in the descriptions of certain videos marketed for this age group — as well as Baby Einstein’s representations that the company will take appropriate steps to ensure that any future advertising claims of educational and/or developmental benefit for children are adequately substantiated.

Who exactly are these bozo parents who thought that Baby Einstein videos would be educational, even though, of course, no one ever suggested that they might be?

Many, it turns out, were the parents surveyed by Andrew Meltzoff, when he was trying to find out if parents really did use the television “as a babysitter.” According to Bronson and Merryman’s NurtureShock:

In that study, parents did confirm that some babysitting was going on, but the main reason infants were watching television — especially videos such as those in the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby series — was because parents believed the programs would give their children a cognitive advantage.

“We had parents with kids in front of the TV for as many as twenty house a week ‘for their brain development,’” recalled Dr. Andrew Meltzoff . . . . ”Parents told us that they couldn’t provide  much for their children, and that troubled them, so they had saved up and bought the videos hoping that would make up for everything else. . . . They said they thought that  was the best thing they could do for their babies.” (p. 200)

 Morons.

Read also: Let’s stop being babies about Disney’s Einstein videos and  Baby Einstein controversy: What parents need to know

Image via daddytypes

There are so many ways to criticize the American Girl doll complex. If you still need convincing, Dr. Michael Rich from the Center on Media and Child Health offers this simple fact:

In short, the less that a doll, or any toy, does on its own—the fewer pre-written stories they come with, and the fewer bells and whistles that determine how a child plays with it—the better the toy is for challenging, stretching, and energizing the growing brain. . . . I encourage you to find [a doll] that isn’t branded at all. Its lack of branding and back story will allow her imagination to go wherever it takes her.*

Think before buying: Who benefits from this purchase? Is it really the child? Is it me (because *I* think it’s cute)? Or is it the multi-million dollar corporation behind it?

More about Dr. Rich, Ask the Mediatrician, and the Center on Media and Child Health.

*Susan Linn has this topic covered in The Case for Make-Believe (now available in paperback).