Week 7-Food Advertising Flashcards
What did the National Child Measurement Programme 2022/23 find regarding the prevalence of excess weight among children?
-Measure weight of children from reception then year 6 (adults can opt out particularly those overweight meaning it is under reported)
-Majority are of healthy weight but a big chunk are overweight and reaching obesity levels
Define what is meant by a child
A person under 18 years of age, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity
Children as a vulnerable group: How are food preferences developed as a baby?
-Innate preferences/predispositions
-Sweet taste is preferred
-Sour taste is rejected (as evolutionary seen as toxic to keep us safe and prolong our lives)
-This mechanism is no longer protective
Children as a vulnerable group: How do children develop their food preferences as they grow up?
- Palatability/taste due to trying a greater variety of food
- Social context e.g., parties, Christmas etc., the association of unhealthy foods with happy and social environments
- Restriction of sweets morphs children as seeing unhealthy food as a forbidden fruit and crave it more
True or False: The global food system is dominated by transnational food corporations
True!
Advertising and marketing try to make themselves as visible as possible to beat their competitors
What’s the cycle of unhealthy food and its environment?
Food environment that makes it easy
to choose and consume unhealthy foods = Reinforces preferences and demands for
unhealthy foods
- Time on commercial media: How often do children consume media? (Ofcom, 2021)
- One in three of the world’s internet users
are children - Most access the internet/digital apps
via mobile devices - In UK, 58% use every day for an
average of 2.5 hours and are predominantly on commercial settings
True or False: Children are preferentially targeted by marketers (Story & French, 2004)
True!
-They are independent spenders (have pocket money and don’t have to worry about bills)
-They have an influence over family spending (through tantrums for example)
-The long-term goal is for these children to be future adult consumers for themselves and hopefully their own family
Children are vulnerable: How is their cognitive development immature? (Ali et al., 2009; Carter et al., 2011)
- Stages towards the development of ‘cognitive defence’:
– Pre-recognition
– Intermission intent
– Informative intent
– Selling intent
-Children tend to think breaks are just there for the actors to have a break and only when they’re older understand that it’s being sold to them
- In terms of capacity for ‘cognitive
defence’, the critical factor is:
– Persuasive intent (requires understanding
of selling intent + more sophisticated
understanding of persuasion) - Digital marketing blurs the boundaries
even further
– Only ¾ of 10 and 12 year olds able to
recognise a static web ad
What are the Key components of food advertising in terms of its effects? (Framework by WHO, 2012)
Marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverages to children:
1. Exposure: the reach and frequency of the marketing message
- Power: the creative content of the ad, the design and execution of the marketing message
These both have an impact on:
-Food preferences
-Purchase requests
-Consumption patterns
True or False: TV advertising is prevalent and dominated by unhealthy foods (Kelly et al., 2010)
True!
-Half and 90% are for unhealthy things
CHECK RECORDING
-Categories include: breakfast cereals, soft drinks, confectionary
-Quite a consistent pattern seen across countries and time
What did Ireland et al. (?) find when measuring food marketing in world cup broadcasts?
- 8 matches
- ~ 28 hours of footage
- 1794 unhealthy brand marketing references
- Average 224 per broadcast and 1.2 per broadcast minute
- 74.8% food/beverage brands
- Majority on pitch border on virtual screen, also on footballers or ad breaks
What did the Obesity Health Alliance find when investigating the “Watershed” Moment?
- The majority (59%) of food and drink adverts shown during family viewing time would be banned from children’s TV, yet hundreds of thousands of children are exposed to these ads every week.
- In the worst case example, children were bombarded with nine HFSS adverts in just a 30 minute period.
- Adverts for fruits and vegetables made up just over 1% of food and drink adverts shown during family viewing time.
- Adverts for fast food and takeaways appeared more than twice as often as any other type of food and drink adverts - largely due to their tactic of sponsoring popular family shows.
What persuasive appeals are used in food ads aimed at children? (Jenkin et al., 2014)
- A systematic narrative review identified 38 articles examining persuasive marketing techniques to promote unhealthy
food to children. - Most frequently reported:
– Premium offers (21 studies)
– Promotional characters (21 studies) e.g., Tony the tiger
– Nutritional and health claims (20 studies)
– The theme of ‘taste’ (17 studies) in an exaggerated way
– The emotional appeal of ‘fun’ (17 studies) - Premium offers and promotional characters used more frequently in the promotion of unhealthy foods than healthy.
What are the implicit and emotional associations with brands?
-Brands want you to have a specific outcome of implicit and emotional associations
For example McDonalds:
-Children’s entertainment e.g., party, toys, Ronald McDonald
-Charities
-Golden Arches
-Fast
-Family-oriented
How do brands use emotional persuasion?
- Extensive use of emotion in ads
Emotional appeals (Jenkin et al., 2014)
Promote family love (Unicef, 2019) - Children show physiological arousal to their favourite food and beverage brands (Smith et al., 2019).
Branded > unbranded
Branded ~= family and friends (socially fulfilled and these foods are at the “heart of it all”)
“McDonald’s’ investment in its brand
and distinctive assets has been so consistent, it is now deeply ingrained
with the audience” Andrew Long, Creative Director, The Outsiders ad agency
-McDonalds have invested so much that everyone can recognise the golden arches and the brand without even seeing the name
What did Boyland et al. (2023) find regarding food marketing and its link to fMRI scanners?
Exposure to food ads, affects areas involved in:
-Visual processing, attention (cuneus, mid
occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus) sensorimotor
processing (post-central gyrus)
-Interpretation of sensory stimuli (e.g.,
taste) and emotional processing (supramarginal gyrus)
-It tells us that the way we respond to ads involves an emotional reaction
What is Digital Marketing? (WHO, 2016)
Promotional activity, delivered through a digital medium, that seeks to maximize impact through creative and/or analytical methods, including:
1. Creative methods to activate emotional persuasion (data analysis).
- Analysis of emotions, responses,
preferences, behaviour and location to
target specific groups, individuals and
particular moments of vulnerability or to
maximise the impact of creative methods.
-A step up from TV in its sophistication and effectiveness in relaying its desired messages
Where do companies market online? (Critchlow et al., 2019)
Each brand uses an interacting network of marketing across multiple digital channels:
1. Paid media e.g., paid influencers, youtube etc.,
2.Owned media e.g., games, Facebook, websites etc.,
- User-generated content e.g., sharing, following and commenting
