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.

Congratulations to the Federal Trade Commission for taking on advertising literacy for kids. They’ve recently introduced an online game, Admongo, to help kids better navigate their commercialized world. While playing the game, kids must closely examine fictional ads: Who is responsible for the ad? What is the ad actually saying? What does the ad want me to do?

Associated resources and a curriculum for grades 5 and 6 are available through Scholastic. (The Scholastic site for parents is coming soon!)

The FTC previously introduced You are Here, a site that also teachers kids about marketing and advertising but  includes lessons on business practices and other topics.

I fully support media literacy, of course. But I can’t help but wonder: What is being done to stop the worst of the worst marketing in the first place?

Commercials Are the Culprit in TV-Obesity Link
Yale Study Finds More Licensed Characters and Other Packaging Promotions Used to Market Less Nutritious Foods to Kids
A Fine Line when Ads and Children Mix
Junk food gets spotlight in many movies: study
BK Kids Meals – Minneapolis’ Campbell Mithun’s Junk Food Client
U-M Researcher Says Preschoolers Understand the Power of Advertising

Just asking.

Over at Mom-101 is a great round-up (in the comments) of what real parents are doing to teach their kids about marketing. I think even Mom-101, a former writer of commercials, would support PEM’s tenets:

– Ethical marketing targets only consumers who can perceive and understand the persuasive tactics in commercials.
– Ethical marketing promotes products that are not harmful to children.
– Ethical marketing supports strong families by respecting parental authority in the parent-child relationship.

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.