$1.6 Billion Spent Promoting Food and Drinks to Kids and Teens

In a report to Congress, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) outlined how the food and beverage industries pull in some of their biggest customers — kids. Not surprisingly, most of the marketing money is not aimed at getting youngsters to yearn for cantaloupe over candy, or enticing teens to choose fresh produce versus fries. Instead, much of the $1.6 billion that the companies spent in 2006 marketing their edible, drinkable products to kids was for soda, breakfast cereal, and fast food.

Luckily, though, advertising to kids is undergoing big changes, which you may notice as you travel the supermarket aisles or ease up to the drive-through. That's due to the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which has been active since the FTC and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put pressure last year on food and drink makers to revise how they promote their products to kids. Now, 13 major companies (responsible for about two-thirds of the TV food and beverage ads directed toward kids) have agreed to limit how they market to children under 12.

According to this latest FTC report following up on the initiative's progress, the companies (including McDonald's, Burger King, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, and Hershey) have pledged to:

1. Spend at least half of their marketing dollars aimed at kids and teens on healthy products and choices (like the efforts from McDonald's, and recently Burger King, to promote only kids' meals with fruit and low-fat milk).
2. Nip product placement for kids under 12 in the bud (i.e., mentioning or showing certain food or beverage brand names on shows, videos, or movies geared toward kids).
3. Stop promoting food or drink brands to kids in school.
4. Make interactive games only about the companies' healthiest options (fare that's lower in fat, calories, sugar, and salt) and healthy lifestyles choices.
5. Decrease the use of licensed characters on packages of often-unhealthy foods and use these familiar faces on companies' "better for you" offerings instead. That means Disney and Sesame Street characters (like Mickey Mouse and Elmo) are only on healthy foods now, and Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants will be on more wholesome options come 2009.

How Companies Catch Kids' Attention

In today's media-saturated environment, kids and teens are exposed to marketing not just on TV, the radio, and in their favorite magazines. Ads are also abundant on the Internet and in what the FTC calls "new electronic media" — things like text messaging, podcasts (digital content sent to computers or portable media players), and "webisodes" (video episodes online).

As the report points out, companies now can even employ a technique called "viral marketing," which encourages young consumers to forward marketing messages to their friends through easy tech tactics like e-cards.

On the Web, food and drink makers often appeal to kids of all ages by offering youth their own sections or completely separate websites featuring activities and free downloads. Some of the freebies, according to the FTC, include music, MySpace page layouts, ringtones, screensavers, and wallpapers for teens; and coloring pages, stickers, games, decals to iron on, and activity sheets for kids. And "advergames," which may seem simply like something fun to play, are made for the sole purpose of promoting a product.