At last week’s Partnership for a Healthier America summit in Washington, D.C., First Lady Michelle Obama announced a new, multimillion dollar advertising initiative to promote consumption of fruits and vegetables. Funded by a coalition of private companies and nonprofits, the “FNV” campaign* will include high caliber celebrities like Jessica Alba, Kristen Bell, Nick Jonas and New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz.
Here’s a teaser ad for the campaign:
While, to my knowledge, the ad campaign isn’t specifically targeted at children, it will surely be seen by them, especially given the participation of popular stars like Nick Jonas and the fact that the campaign will include both traditional media and use of social media and guerrilla marketing.
In the past, I’ve had an ongoing debate with some food policy colleagues over whether it’s ever OK to influence kids through marketing, even if the advertisements are for healthy foods. In those debates I’ve agreed that it’s generally unethical to market to children, given that they lack the intellectual capacity to know they’re being marketed to.
But I’ve also argued several times on this blog and elsewhere that I’d wholeheartedly support even the most aggressive, child-directed marketing tactics if the products in question are whole or minimally processed fruits and vegetables. Such foods are unequivocally good for us, both children and adults eat far too few of them, and I see little risk that marketing will ever cause a mindless overconsumption of produce.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the dietary equation, the food and beverage industries spend almost $2 billion a year to market generally unhealthy but hyper-palatable products specifically to our kids. In 2012, the fast food industry spent an astonishing $4.6 billion on advertising. Meanwhile, in that same year, only $116 million was spent on the marketing of fruits and vegetables. As noted in this Politico piece about the FNV campaign, the produce industry, “hampered by tight margins, perishability and a decentralized market, has historically not been able to afford expensive advertising campaigns.”
So when I see teasers like these coming from the FNV campaign . . .
. . . as a parent, just three words come to my mind: Bring. It. On.
And if you have any doubt that the campaign could well be effective, consider this fearful reaction from a member of the processed food industry, as quoted in Politico:
“I think the problem is that [the First Lady’s] surrounded herself with activists or food elitists that will tell her things as a fact when they’re not,” said one industry insider, who did not want to be named, adding that the produce industry is “reaping enormous returns” from the high-profile push for fruits and vegetables.
Hmm… Between FNV’s simple message that we ought to be eating more fresh fruits and vegetables versus Big Food “health” claims like these, who is really telling “things as a fact when they’re not?”
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* The FNV campaign is created by the firm Victors & Spoils, which has had some practice in this area. Some of you may remember this 2013 Sunday New York Times magazine article, in which Times writer Michael Moss (Salt Sugar Fat) challenged that agency to come up with a mock campaign for broccoli.
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Casey says
You make a good case but here’s why I disagree this is a good thing for kids. As Marion Nestle put it: “Food marketing to kids is flat-out unethical and should stop.”
We have marketing for dairy junk food in our schools because there were concerns kids weren’t drinking enough milk. Will the “FNV” campaign be used by juice companies to market to our kids as well? When our kids are older, will they care whether their Type 2 diabetes came from soda marketed by Coca-Cola or juice marketed by Bolthouse Farms?
I don’t like the idea of fight fire with fire when it comes to marketing to kids. Targeting children’s developmental vulnerabilities to fight companies who are targeting their developmental vulnerabilities? I think kids will be the one who get burned by adding more marketing to the already excessive advertising aimed at today’s youth
I’ll work on a post to more fully explain my concerns about this approach. In the meantime I think we can both agree Coca-Cola decals don’t belong on the McDonald’s PlayPlace window 😉
Bettina Elias Siegel says
I’m with you on both dairy and juice, Casey. I know it’s a fine line, but my “carve-out” for marketing to kids really would be confined only to minimally processed fruits and vegetables. If that implies “juice” to anyone, then I need to be more clear. I would even be willing to create a very specific definition of what I mean: fruits and vegetables which are raw, dried (and to which no sugar has been added), canned in 100% fruit juice or water, frozen … I’d have to think about it a little more to close Big Food loopholes, but you get the idea.
And yes, on McD’s, we are in TOTAL agreement.
Casey says
The issue I have is not what that fine line means to you but what it means to the companies behind this campaign. I have no trust that a juice company won’t use this to push juice.
Also how does this impact the other brands these celebrities are marketing? “Hey kids, listen to John Cena when he promotes apples but not when he promotes Fruity Pebbles” makes the line even more blurry and I think it’s intentional. I plan to keep the marketing defenses up for my kids and keep pushing back against all shameless marketing to kids.
Sharon Badian says
I think the trailer is very cool and flashy and will probably appeal to kids. It is very different from many of the ads directed at kids, however. Ads with cartoon characters, ads that appeal directly to kids with kids speaking as kids to kids, ads that tell the kids to demand from their parents all those wonderful foods they are being denied are disturbing to me. There’s a series out now from KFC with kids talking to their parents about how outraged they are for the crappy nuggets they have been eating but it’s one in a long series of ads using kids to sell to kids rather than selling to their parents. There is something very manipulative about those ads since kids lack the critical thinking skills of adults. Are fruits with Sesame Street characters on the packaging in the same league? Definitely more subtle then featuring kids trying to guilt their parents into buying them something.
I don’t believe ads that directly market to kids are going away, no matter what people like Mark Bittman or Marion Nestle may say. So, why not come up with some flashy and pretty cute, I must say, ads to battle back a little?
As a parent, I did do battle with my kid on occasion against flashy kid ads. But, I have to say she is a very savvy consumer (she’s 22 now) and I like to think it’s because I wouldn’t give in much. 🙂
Maggie says
I have concerns that at some point, someone would decide that regulations would need to be created – what counts as a healthful product that can be allowed to be advertised to children. And from there, the situation would turn into increasingly complex rules that the “not really heathful” products would find a way around, and much time and effort would be spent fighting about this…and the original point that maybe this is something that can encourage healthful habits would be lost in the fracas.
Amber Austin says
I’m with you, Bettina – BRING IT ON! Anything that can make eating real fruits and vegetables cool is worth a shot, in my book. While I totally hear what the other commenters are saying about marketing to kids (you made the point as well), I missed their suggestions for other ways to make eating real fruits and vegetables cool (I am positive that almost anything mom and dad suggests stops being cool between the ages of about 8 and 22).
Let’s face it, we have all heard about the increase in food waste in school lunch programs since students are now required to select actual fruits and vegetables (it’s one of SNA’s arguments for asking Congress for “flexibility” with this portion of the meal pattern). Some have said that we have the healthiest trash cans in the world. Rather than rolling back healthful changes, this ad campaign seems to take the positive approach of getting kids to actually want to select (and then actually eat) fruits and vegetables. What a novel idea! 😉
bw1 says
I have a problem with any attempt to manipulate kids into doing the right thing by making it “cool.” The problem is that you’re training them in a lemming decision calculus, and you’re not always going to be able to steer the definition of what’s hip. Teach kids sound, rational decision making skills in one area, so they can apply that methodology in other areas where you haven’t managed to astroturf what’s in vogue. Furthermore, if they understand what’s good for them and what’s not, and WHY, they can make nuanced cost/benefit judgments about limited
exposure to junk food.
Celebrities hawking vegetables, trendy “just say no” slogans for drug use, and a host of other such efforts are part of an overall trend. It seems that the fashionable paradigms in childrearing are becoming more dogmatic and less flexible. We try to cocoon kids from risk, which leaves them unable to evaluate risk so they end up taking foolish risks and getting hurt worse later. We teach them that violence is always wrong (yet maintain a military and arm our police like soldiers) rather than how to evaluate what’s worth fighting for, and end up with kids who kill themselves and others over trivial matters. Now we want to teach them to choose food based on pyschological manipulation and social conformity – of course there’s no way THAT could backfire, right?
Teach your children to think, not emote and conform. This hearkens back to Bettina’s post about sneaking carrots into her son’s smoothie. Upon discovering that he had just enjoyed a smoothie containing carrots, something he had previously claimed wasn’t a possibility, the opportunity to rationally re-evaluate his assumptions based on empirical evidence (i.e. stop deceiving himself) was eclipsed by his emotional reaction to having been (harmlessly) deceived.
Of course this approach goes perfectly with other themes around here, like expecting schools to ban voluntary exchanges between students rather than expecting one’s own child to exercise restraint and self control.