Curbs on children’s ads, an urgent need

By Lionel WIJESIRI

It’s a sad commentary on Sri Lankan priorities when consumers spend more time and effort reading consumer reports when deciding what refrigerator or television to purchase, but spend virtually no time when deciding how they will feed their infants. The main cause of such a serious misalignment in priorities is the result of many consumers being susceptible to the marketing campaigns on television, radio and in the print media.

Formula ads are everywhere. Images of beautiful women, even supermodels, feeding their babies formula have desensitised Sri Lankan consumers to the health consequences of using formula. It’s no wonder that so many consumers have fallen victim to what is clearly the greatest marketing ploy and largest scientific experiment of our time.

The wielding power of media advertising has been and will continue to be an area of debate for years to come. Advertising today is an inescapable phenomenon; from the moment we wake up to the time we sleep, advertisements bombard us. Estimates of the amount of advertisements people are exposed to on a daily basis range from an arguably modest 100 to anywhere up to around 3,000 messages per day.

One of the main contentions regarding the issue is the argument to what degree, if at all, children can critically engage with advertising and whether or not it is ethical to allow corporate interests to change the perceptions and behaviour of the young. There is undeniably a great deal of advertising on television currently, which is aimed at children, promoting not only toys and sweets, but also products such as food, drinks, music, films and clothing to young consumers from toddlers to teenagers.

Increasingly, this practice is coming under attack from many NGOs, politicians and pressure groups. The UK, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Denmark and Belgium all currently impose national restrictions, and these have also been proposed in most other European Union countries and in the USA.

Within Europe, the EU Audio-visual Media Services Directive has been in place since the end of 2009 and places further restrictions on advertising to children, while also stressing the role of self-regulation among industry groups.

For example, Article 9 (2) of the Directive says: “Member States and the Commission shall encourage media service providers to develop codes of conduct regarding inappropriate audio-visual commercial communications, accompanying or included in children’s programmes, of foods and beverages containing nutrients and substances with a nutritional or physiological effect, in particular those such as fat, trans-fatty acids, salt/sodium and sugars, excessive intakes of which in the overall diet are not recommended.”

Ads against children

There are three major arguments put forward against advertising specifically for children:

* Advertising aimed at children brings negative social consequences, as much of it is for food and drinks that are very unhealthy. Encouraging gullible children to consume so much fatty, sugary and salty food is unethical because it creates obese, unhealthy youngsters, with bad eating habits that will be with them for life. Society also has to pay a high price in terms of the extra medical care such children will eventually require, so the government has a direct interest in preventing advertisements which contribute to this problem.

* Advertising specifically to children is also unethical because they have little or no money of their own and have to persuade their parents to buy the products for them. Rather than advertising directly to parents, companies use a “nag and whine” campaign that leads to hostility between parents and children. They rely on pester power to make adults spend money they don’t have on things they don’t want to buy, and which their children may well only play with for a few hours for example.

Advertising which presents products to children as “must-have” is also socially divisive, making children whose parents cannot afford them appear inferior and creating feelings of frustration and inadequacy, as well as leading families into debt.

* Advertising towards children cannot be considered ethical as children have not yet fully developed their mental cognition. They lack the complete tool set to view advertising critically and advertisers take advantage of this, disregarding any negative effects it may have on children and society more generally.

What must be remembered is advertising is sometimes much more subtle than commercial breaks on television. It can be found in many more places; advertisers target children in schools, online with content such as product-branded games and also via product placement to name but a few examples. These types of advertising are much harder for children to be critical of as they are less overt; with product placement even often evading the direct attention of adult viewers. The final outcome is manipulation of children who are vulnerable to such messages.

Psychology

To bombard children with this advertising, the advertisers have help. Today, leading psychologists are actually working alongside advertisers to tell them how to market to children aged three to 12 and why these children do what they do.

This has become such a problem in the USA that some psychologists are up in arms about it, and have taken the issue to the American Psychological Association (APA) to try and get some standards implemented on this situation.

The APA has created a task force to look into this issue because so much is being said about it. The task force will examine the effects of advertising on children and the role of psychologists in the process.

Some psychologists protest this action because they do not see it as doing anything wrong. They feel that by helping advertisers they are helping children become better consumers.

Investigation

The writer believes that it is time the authorities examine the ethical issues in advertising to children in Sri Lanka. We must thoroughly comprehend the complexity of the nature of the relevance of adverting to the life of children both as a beneficial tool which informs, educates, and offers social benefits and the other side which revolves around the major criticism directed at it as being unethical, largely as a result of the irregularities in the way some marketeers adopt it.

All over the world, attention is now being drawn to children as constituting a group that has an impact in marketing-related issues both at the family level and even in society. The advertising literature consistently emphasises three reasons which point to the significance of children in family purchases.

These are:

* They constitute a primary market for goods and services, spending their own money to fulfil their needs and wants; they influence the family in decision making;

* They are a future market for all goods and services that, if cultivated now, will provide a steady stream of new customers when they reach adulthood when the particular goods and services are relevant;

* This last reason is, as confirmed by psychologists, children’s brand preference often remains unchanged throughout life. Therefore, children constitute a key target market for advertisers.

A study by the World Health Organization, recently published in the Social Science and Medicine Journal, found that both formula ads and doctors’ suggestions to use formula did influence mothers’ feeding choices. According to their findings, 59.1 percent of the mothers recalled an infant formula advertisement message and one-sixth reported a doctor recommending the use of formula. Those who recalled an ad message were twice as likely to feed their babies infant formula, while those who were advised by a doctor were four times as likely to do so.

Yes, twice as likely! Mothers who saw formula ads were twice as likely to feed their babies formula. There is a big gaping hole between “Thou Shalt Breastfeed” and “Try Formula”.

The gaping hole needs to be filled with affordable, accessible, quality breastfeeding support. Instead, that hole is too frequently filled with formula ads.

Responsibilities

The writer wishes to quote some extracts from the report ‘Television advertising and food demand of children in Sri Lanka: A case study from Galle District’ by G.R.S.R.C. Samaraweera and K.L.N. Samanthi of the Department of Economics and Statistics, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka:

“Advertising agencies should identify their social responsibility of creating a better future for the children rather than be profit-oriented. Child-focused advertising should be controlled by them by following appropriate business advertising ethics.

“The role of the media is also an important factor to be considered with respect to advertising. They should be more careful in advertising during the telecasting of child-focused programs.

“Finally, the government has the key role of prohibiting and controlling unethical advertisements by using well-planned criterion. Sri Lanka does not have a proper legal framework for advertising, which has resulted in huge harm on culture and the society of the country.

Therefore, the government should identify their role on undue advertising regarding food items mostly used by children. It will help achieve sustainable development for the country with a healthy nation.”