Advocates Prompt FTC to Investigate Digital Food Marketing

Consumer groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate digital food and beverage marketing of junk foods to children after a new report revealed that the technology is contributing to poor nutrition and obesity.

The report, released last Thursday, asks the commission to require food and beverage marketers to report all digital marketing and market research activities targeting children and teens.

The study, conducted by the Center for Digital Democracy and Berkeley Media Studies Group, documents how marketers are using techniques such as cell phones, instant messaging, video games and user-generated video to get their messages out.

“We gave [the FTC] a primer,” Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Friday. “If the industry is going to seriously address how marketers provide children and teens with information, we have to address where they have advanced their marketing capabilities.”

The request came just as the FTC is set to subpoena about 45 marketers to obtain food marketing information. Congress directed the FTC—which has not set a release date for the report—in 2005 to collect data on the topic.

“Food and beverage marketers now target children and adolescents with unprecedented reach and sophistication,” the report said. “These practices deserve close scrutiny and immediate action by policymakers and the public.”

The study cites a number of digital marketing case studies.

It highlights Coca-Cola’s My Coke Rewards loyalty program, which offers codes on its products that consumers can redeem online for rewards and experiences. And a viral Domino’s Pizza promotion in which the company launched a series of videos and offered prizes on eBay. The campaign was part of its Anything Goes Deal Contest that rolled out in January.

The 98-page report titled “Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age,” took eight months to compile.

“As our research shows, major food and beverage brands are utilizing a variety of new venues…in their efforts to target children and adolescents and to foster ongoing personal relationships with them, often under the radar of parents,” Chester and Kathryn Montgomery, an American University professor who co-authored the report, wrote in a May 17 letter accompanying the report.

The letter was co-signed by Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, Patti Miller of Children Now and Jason A. Smith, associate executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute.

The report addresses a new side of the public debate about food marketing and children, which traditionally was focused on television.

“The FTC needs as much information as possible about where this market is and where it is headed,” Montgomery said Friday. “I don’t think enough people in the public understand that. We want to really inform the public and policymakers, and while we’re at it help the parents understand the nature of this new marketing system.”

The report, available at DigitalAds.org, listed several recommendations. Among them are:

• Appropriate Congressional committees should hold hearings on contemporary food marketing practices targeting children and teens.
• The FTC, Federal Communications Commission and Congress should work together, with the industry and public health and child advocacy groups to develop a new set of rules governing the marketing of food and beverage products to children.
• Government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and FTC, should regularly monitor the digital media marketing industries.
• Private and public funds should be set up support research on interactive media and their ties to children and teens’ health.

“We are dealing with a powerful set of technology that must be used responsibly,” Chester said. “We need to do this right.”

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