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Food Marketing How do advertisers trick us?
Marketing has long been a feature of our daily landscape. But the explosion of digital culture in recent years has dramatically changed the playing field and the rules, especially for children and teenagers, and companies marketing fast food, snack food, and soft drinks are at the forefront of the game.
Young people's relationship with media is no longer limited to the passive, one-sided consumption of TV commercials, print ads, and the like. Now our kids are interacting with brands and products every day, often unwittingly inviting marketers to connect with them and their friends online. Marketers are carefully tracking teens online and by cell phone, mining conversations on Facebook and Twitter, collecting data to develop and record personalised behavioural profiles, and more.
The traditional marketing paradigm is spinning into an unprecedented new world, as fast food, snack, and beverage companies draw from an expanding toolbox of sophisticated online and social marketing techniques. Today, powerful and intense promotions are completely, seamlessly integrated into young people's social relationships and minute-by-minute interactions.
Why should health advocates be concerned about the new marketing paradigm? Because young people's choices about what to eat and when are largely shaped by food and beverage marketing -- and these industries are now reaching our kids through a multitude of interactive devices and platforms, pushing products onto young consumers who lack the information and capacity to understand the consequences of an impulsive decision.
Food and beverage marketing to children in America represents a direct threat to the health prospects of the next generation. Now more than ever, children in the United States are growing up in environments saturated with marketing for fast food, snacks, and sugary beverages. Today, one in three teens is either overweight or obese, and overweight young people are likely to stay overweight throughout their lives, which puts them at higher risk for serious and even life-threatening health problems.
Teenagers are an obvious prime audience for digital marketing strategies, given their avid use of mobile phones, media players, blogs, online video channels, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and other digital media platforms and devices. And they're especially vulnerable to food and beverage marketers' tactics: The teen years are a critical developmental period when consumer and eating behaviours are established that may well last throughout an individual's lifetime.
What's more, growing research suggests that biological and psychosocial attributes of the adolescent experience may play an important role in making teens more vulnerable to marketing. Research on brain development, for example, has found that the prefrontal cortex -- which controls inhibition -- may not fully mature until early adulthood. Meanwhile, children entering puberty experience hormonal changes that make them more receptive to environmental stimuli.
In other words, at the time in their lives when their biological urges are particularly intense, adolescents have not yet acquired the ability to control these urges. Researchers suggest that these innate factors are likely to make teens more susceptible to advertising, especially when they are distracted, exposed to high-level stimuli, or subjected to peer pressure -- all hallmarks of digital marketing tactics.
The impact of food marketing on ethnic minority youth is a particular concern. Obesity rates are significantly higher for African-American girls and Hispanic boys than for whites, and ethnic youth are targeted aggressively by the food, beverage, and fast food industries. Research shows that ethnic minority youth are more interested in, positive toward, and influenced by marketing than non-Hispanic whites. A research group backed by McDonald's, Kraft, PepsiCo, Burger King, and others calls Hispanics "the most important U.S. demographic growth driver in the food, beverage, and restaurant sectors." And African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than "general market" consumers to use social networking spaces to share opinions with friends about products, services, and brands, according to a column in Advertising Age. Driven by the growing number of ethnic youth, as well as by their heavy use of new media and cultural trendsetting, digital marketers have made understanding and connecting with ethnic youth a priority.
Of all the tactics fast food, snack food, and soft drink companies routinely use to target children and adolescents, many fall into five broad categories:
reference: http://www.bmsg.org/resources/publications/the-new-age-of-food-marketing
Young people's relationship with media is no longer limited to the passive, one-sided consumption of TV commercials, print ads, and the like. Now our kids are interacting with brands and products every day, often unwittingly inviting marketers to connect with them and their friends online. Marketers are carefully tracking teens online and by cell phone, mining conversations on Facebook and Twitter, collecting data to develop and record personalised behavioural profiles, and more.
The traditional marketing paradigm is spinning into an unprecedented new world, as fast food, snack, and beverage companies draw from an expanding toolbox of sophisticated online and social marketing techniques. Today, powerful and intense promotions are completely, seamlessly integrated into young people's social relationships and minute-by-minute interactions.
Why should health advocates be concerned about the new marketing paradigm? Because young people's choices about what to eat and when are largely shaped by food and beverage marketing -- and these industries are now reaching our kids through a multitude of interactive devices and platforms, pushing products onto young consumers who lack the information and capacity to understand the consequences of an impulsive decision.
Food and beverage marketing to children in America represents a direct threat to the health prospects of the next generation. Now more than ever, children in the United States are growing up in environments saturated with marketing for fast food, snacks, and sugary beverages. Today, one in three teens is either overweight or obese, and overweight young people are likely to stay overweight throughout their lives, which puts them at higher risk for serious and even life-threatening health problems.
Teenagers are an obvious prime audience for digital marketing strategies, given their avid use of mobile phones, media players, blogs, online video channels, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and other digital media platforms and devices. And they're especially vulnerable to food and beverage marketers' tactics: The teen years are a critical developmental period when consumer and eating behaviours are established that may well last throughout an individual's lifetime.
What's more, growing research suggests that biological and psychosocial attributes of the adolescent experience may play an important role in making teens more vulnerable to marketing. Research on brain development, for example, has found that the prefrontal cortex -- which controls inhibition -- may not fully mature until early adulthood. Meanwhile, children entering puberty experience hormonal changes that make them more receptive to environmental stimuli.
In other words, at the time in their lives when their biological urges are particularly intense, adolescents have not yet acquired the ability to control these urges. Researchers suggest that these innate factors are likely to make teens more susceptible to advertising, especially when they are distracted, exposed to high-level stimuli, or subjected to peer pressure -- all hallmarks of digital marketing tactics.
The impact of food marketing on ethnic minority youth is a particular concern. Obesity rates are significantly higher for African-American girls and Hispanic boys than for whites, and ethnic youth are targeted aggressively by the food, beverage, and fast food industries. Research shows that ethnic minority youth are more interested in, positive toward, and influenced by marketing than non-Hispanic whites. A research group backed by McDonald's, Kraft, PepsiCo, Burger King, and others calls Hispanics "the most important U.S. demographic growth driver in the food, beverage, and restaurant sectors." And African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than "general market" consumers to use social networking spaces to share opinions with friends about products, services, and brands, according to a column in Advertising Age. Driven by the growing number of ethnic youth, as well as by their heavy use of new media and cultural trendsetting, digital marketers have made understanding and connecting with ethnic youth a priority.
Of all the tactics fast food, snack food, and soft drink companies routinely use to target children and adolescents, many fall into five broad categories:
- Creating immersive environments
- Infiltrating social networks
- Location-based and mobile marketing
- Collecting personal data
- Studying and triggering the subconscious
reference: http://www.bmsg.org/resources/publications/the-new-age-of-food-marketing