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.

Thanks to James Lardner I can introduce you to Demos (@Demos_Org), non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization, and to Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution.

James, a senior policy analyst with Demos, attended my lunch discussion about social media in advocacy at the Consuming Kids Summit in Boston.

His colleague Heather Rogers takes a critical look at eco-friendly consumption in Green Gone Wrong. In this short promo from Simon and Schuster, Rogers talks about the emphasis placed on personal choices and the idea that by buying the right products we can help save the planet:

[But] what choices are we given? What are the decisions that are made before we’re in the store choosing the products that we buy? What decisions are governments making? What decisions are manufacturers making?

How do we go into the realm of understanding ourselves as political actors and agents in our lives and not just consumers?

I’m off to Boston for the CCFC Consuming Kids Summit: Market Values, Human Values, and the Lives of Children. Tonight they’re honoring Annie Leonard, creator and host of the Internet film sensation The Story of Stuff, with the Fred Rogers Integrity Award. Tomorrow the conference begins.

I’ll be attempting Twitter updates (@lisa_ray and #cksummit) with my new iPod Touch, but don’t expect too much. I just learned how to turn it on.

If you’re looking for something to read, I’ve posted Time for Schools to Retire Ronald at change.org. This is a great campaign sponsored by Corporate Accountability International. Please consider signing the petition.

Recently we’ve seen an increase in impending government legislation created to protect children.

For example, the Healthy Media for Youth Act was recently introduced in Congress. The bill would create media literacy programs, promote research on the effect of media images on kids, and encourage the adoption of voluntary guidelines to promote healthier media images of girls and women. The bill was developed in collaboration with the Girl Scouts.

Next,  the Food and Drug Administration (with its newfound authority) has issued rules restricting tobacco industry marketing and sales to youth. Nice timing, considering that we just learned how the RJ Reynolds’ pink Camel No. 9 campaign targeted young teenage girls.

The rules, which take effect on June 22, will ban all remaining tobacco-brand sponsorships of sports/entertainment events;  address outdoor tobacco advertising near schools and playgrounds; and restrict tobacco ads to black-and-white text only in publications that teens read and at point-of-sale.

Then there’s the newly formed Task Force on Childhood Obesity, made up of the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and  Education. It has recently requested comments to inform upcoming policy decisions.

The official Presidential Memo directs the Task Force to focus on four issues: ensuring access to healthy, affordable food; increasing physical activity in schools and communities; providing healthier food in schools; and empowering parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families.

Childhood obesity concerns have also prompted the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which directs the Department of Agriculture to set new nutrition standards for food served in schools, including vending machine offerings. The current laws are almost thirty years old.

Finally, the Federal Trade Commission is requesting comments on its reevaluation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Among other things, COPPA governs what information companies can collect online from children under age 13. Changes in technology and how children use the internet and social media prompted the review.

That’s a lot of legislation and it’s all essentially designed to protect kids from corporate marketing. I truly wish all this legislation wasn’t necessary. But we know that allowing industry self-regulation doesn’t work and that corporations are not going to do much more on their own. Not when they can continue to profit from recruiting brand ambassadors.

And remember, while Washington is spending our tax dollars creating task forces and legislative actions and holding press conferences and gathering comments? Corporations continue to deduct their advertising and marketing expenses from their federal taxes.

So essentially, our tax dollars pay for the ads that sell tobacco and junk food and promote unhealthy body images to our kids.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Read also: Jill Richardson’s Behind the Shady World of Marketing Junk Food to Children and Lousy School Lunch Bill, One Step Closer to Passage and Michele Simon’s Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move – Will it Move Industry?

Image courtesy ex_magician

Update 3/13: Bowing to corporate America, Judge Baker center loses face (Opinion, Boston Globe)

By now you may have heard (or read, in the New York Times) how the multi-billion dollar Disney Corp. saw to it that the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, their $250,000 budget and two, count ‘em, two staff members were booted from their home at the Judge Baker Children’s Center.

Disney sicked their lawyers on CCFC’s Harvard-based sponsor when they realized that the organization could actually affect their magical brand identity: CCFC had called Disney on their Baby Einstein marketing claims.

It’s a shame. Disney could have taken this opportunity to engage instead of fight.

Although I thought it impossible, my disdain for Disney has reached a new low high.* What to do? There’s a difficulty in taking my business elsewhere, since Disney owns everything. Almost literally. (My 12-year-old has suggested a Year Without Disney. Book deal and Colbert appearance? Hmm.)

Looks like the Judge Baker Center is suffering over its decision. And CCFC lives to advocate another day.

Can you help? Support CCFC.

Read more:

Critics of Baby Einstein DVDs say Disney pressed landlord to evict them (LA Times)
“Mouse Inc?” Disney Bullies Small & Mighty CCFC From Home? (Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth)
Did Disney Threaten a Children’s Mental Health Center? Read Between the Lines (Newsweek)
and All I think about is princesses . . .

Image courtesy bixentro

*3/13 Note to self: Get an editor.

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.