SYMPOSIUM From Tastes The Commercialization of Childhood ...jkeil/Welcome_files/Schor... · The food, beverage, and restaurant industry is one of the nation's largest, with annual

SYMPOSIUM

From TastesGreat to Cool:Children's FoodMarketing andthe Rise of theSymbolicJuliet B. Schor and Margaret Ford

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The Commercialization of ChildhoodIt is now well recognized that the United States is aconsumer-driven society. Private consumption com-prises a rising fraction of GDP, advertising is prolif-erating, and consumerism, as an ideology and set ofvalues, is widespread. Not surprisingly, those develop-ments are not confined to adults; they also characterizewhat some have called "the commercialization of child-hood."' Children are more involved than ever in media,celebrity, shopping, brand names, and other consumerpractices. At the core of this change is children's grow-ing role as independent consumers. In recent years,children's access to income has risen markedly, andthey have gone from being purchasers of cheap plasticgoods and a few select food items (e.g., candy) to beinga major market for a diverse set of goods and services,including foodstuffs. Unofficial estimates suggest thatchildren aged four to twelve spent a reported $6.1 bil-lion in purchases from their own money in 1989, $23.4billion in 1997, and $30 billion in 2002, for a totalincrease of four hundred percent.' The largest productcategory is sweets, snacks, and beverages, which ac-count for a third of children's total expenditures.3

As their participation in consumer markets hasgrown, children have become increasingly attractivetargets for advertisers. This is partly driven by theirhigh media use. According to the 2005 Kaiser Fam-ily Foundation study of children and media use, theaverage eight to eighteen year old is currently exposedto eight-and-a-half hours of media a day, almost allof which is "commercial" media. Actual media time(as opposed to media exposure, which double countsperiods when more than one medium is being usedsimultaneously) is six hours and twenty-one minutes.4

Younger children, for whom the most recent data arenot available, also have very high levels of media use.In a 1999 Kaiser study, children aged two to thirteenwere found to watch more than two hours of televi-sion per day, and their total media time was five anda half hours of per day.5 Although pre-school childrentend to have lower television viewing than school-aged children, 25% of them have televisions in theirbedrooms,6 and watch an average of two hours a day.7Viewing time and exposure to junk food marketing ismuch higher for low-income children as well as racialand ethnic minority children, groups which also havehigher rates of obesity and obesity-related illnesses. Forexample, in the 2005 study, black children were found

Juliet Schor, Ph.D., is Professor ofSociology atBoston Collegeand author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child andthe New Consumer Culture. Margaret Ford is an under-graduate sociology major at Boston College and a member ofthe departmental honors program.

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to watch an average of four hours and five minutes ofTV daily, compared to two hours forty-five minutesfor white children. Latinos were in-between, at threehours twenty-three minutes.8

Heavy media use is the foundation of high levels ofadvertising exposure. The range of estimates is thatchildren are exposed to between 20,000 and 40,000ads per year. Our rough estimates suggest the former isthe correct figure.9 Expenditure on marketing to chil-dren went from about $2 billion in 1999 to approxi-mately $15 billion in 2004,10 suggesting that children'sexposure to ads has risen significantly, a result of moretelevision ads as well as the proliferation of other typesof marketing aimed at children (see below).

Food is at the core of the larger trend of tcommercialization of childhood, both beiis the largest product category for spendiadvertising, and because in many ways itparadigm case for a wider range of prodt

Part of what has put children in marketers' sights isthat they have become primary influencers of parentalpurchases, in addition to spenders of their own money.Children's marketer James McNeal estimates that in2002, children aged four to twelve directly influenced$310 billion of adult purchasing and evoked another$340 billion., McNeal estimates that this so-called"influence" market is growing at 20% per year.12 Thelargest category of influence is food. This is due to avariety of factors, such as direct targeting of childrenwith food ads, the rise of convenience food and res-taurant meals, busier lifestyles, and more democraticdecision-making in families. Indeed, food is at the coreof the larger trend of the commercialization of child-hood, both because it is the largest product category forspending and advertising, and because in many ways itis the paradigm case for a wider range of products. Weturn now to recent developments in food marketing tochildren.

The Scope and Scale of Children'sFood AdvertisingThe food, beverage, and restaurant industry is one ofthe nation's largest, with annual sales of nearly $900billion. The industry is estimated to spend $33 billiona year in direct advertising.'3 In 2004, one third, or$11 billion, went to direct advertising in media outlets,and $6.5 of that went to television.14 Seventy percentare for convenience foods, candy and snacks, alcoholicbeverages, soft drinks, and desserts.15 Individual cor-

CHILDHOOD OBESITY * SPRING 2007

porations spend vast sums advertising their brands.In 2004, McDonald's alone spent $528.8 billion foradvertising,16 and an estimated 40% of their expen-ditures are targeted at children.17 Coca-Cola spent$123.4 million on its Coke Classic brand, and PepsiCospent $104.0 on Pepsi-Cola.,, PepsiCo's expenditureson Lay's potato chips and Doritos alone were $33.4million.19

It is hard to quantify exactly how much of this totalis directed at children, because their viewing is nolonger confined to a few children's time slots. They arenow heavy viewers of prime time and other non-agesegregated media. However, experts put the figure atroughly $10 billion, and believe the fraction directed

at children is growing.20 Not sur-prisingly, food companies have sue-

he ceeded in generating good will withcause it young consumers. On the basis of the

ng and 20,000 per year estimate of children'stelevision ad exposure, and a bench-

is the mark figure of 50% as the fraction ofIcts. food product ads, the average child

is exposed to about 27 food ads perday. A 1998 study by Campbell Mit-

hun Esty found that food items dominate kids' favoriteads. Of the ten most popular ads that year, five werefor junk foods (Pepsi, Coke, Snickers, McDonald's, andHostess) in addition to the perennial favorite - Bud-weiser.21

Margaret Gamble and Nancy Cotugna's 1996 con-tent analysis of Saturday morning cartoons by foundthat 63% of the 353 advertisements in this time slotwere for food products. Among these commercials, ce-real ads comprised 40% of the total, with the propor-tion in the high sugar category increasing from 23 to34.5% between 1991 and 1996. The authors reportedthat among nearly 1,400 food ads studied between1972 and 1996, there were no commercials advertisingfruits and vegetables with the exception of a few PublicService Announcements.2 2 (The lack of fruit and veg-etable advertising is due to the fact that almost none,with the prominent exception of Chiquita Bananas,are branded.)

Children are also heavily exposed to food ads duringprime time viewing hours. A 1998 content analysisduring the top-ranked prime-time shows for childrenaged two to eleven found that 23% of the commercialswere for food, and 40% of those were for fast-foodrestaurants.23 Excluding fast-foods, 41% of the adver-tised foods were in the fats, oils and sweets categoryof the United States Department of Agriculture's foodpyramid. A similar percentage fell into the grains cat-egory, and nearly half of those had either a high fat orsugar content.2 4 Preliminary content analyses done by

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the authors in the summer of 2006 have found that44.4 % of ads on children's networks during weekendmornings and the after-school block are for foods.25Notably, even as the range of products advertised di-rectly to children rises, food remains by far the domi-nant category.

Food marketing to children has moved beyond thetelevision set, however. Packaging has become a formof advertisement, as companies innovate by puttingfood into "cool" new containers or adding licensedcharacters, games, and ads for other branded foods.Another marketing strategy is product placement, inwhich food companies pay producers of music videos,radio, books, comic strips, songs, plays, and moviesto place the product in the setting.26 This strategy isthought to have begun in 1982 when sales of Hershey'sReese's Pieces Candy rose 65% in the month followingthe release of the movie E.T., The Extra Terrestrial,where the product had a prominent placement.27 Theeffectiveness of product placement is thought to be onaccount of its ability to avoid seeming like a sales pitch,as well as its association with highly valued celebrities.Product placements also cannot be zapped out, unlike30-second spots.

Another common promotional technique for food isgiveaways, or premiums. Premiums have moved awayfrom a simple toy or sticker in the cereal box to moreexpensive toy gifts, particularly at fast food outlets.McDonald's Happy Meals are arguably the most suc-cessful marketing strategy in human history, and arecredited with turning a visit to a fast food restaurantinto a favored activity for children. The current prizefor the Happy Meal is a "fun game piece" from the Dis-ney movie Pirates of the Caribbean, which was releasedin the summer of 2006 to record box office revenues,2Rand is part of a ten-year global marketing agreementDisney signed with McDonald's in 1996.29

Character licensing has also become pervasive, espe-cially for major movie releases. For example, breakfastcereal Cap'n Crunch launched a campaign with WarnerBrother's 2006 Superman, creating a new cereal called"Superman Crunch" with advertisements for the movieon the box as well as in the television commercials.Other recent cross-promotions include Go-gurt andDisney/Pixar's movie Cars, and Burger King and War-ner Brothers' The Ant Bully. Harry Potter famously"sold out," according to some, by cross-promoting withCoca-Cola.

Food corporations are also are collaborating withtoy companies and book publishers to launch lines ofbranded books and toys, especially to pre-school agedchildren. Amazon.com sells more than 40 children'sbranded food counting and reading books such as:The M&M's Brand Counting Book, Kellogg's Fruit

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Loops! Counting Fun Book, Oreo Cookie CountingBook, Skittles Riddles Math, Hershey's KissesAdditionBook, and Reese's Math Fun: Addition I to 9.30 Otherbranded products include Mattel's Barbie Dolls with"Jell-o" t-shirts, free Jell-o and a mold, Barbie dressedin a McDonald's employee outfit, and Easy-Bake Ovenswith food preparation sets from Oreo, Chips Ahoy, PopTarts, M&M's Cookies and Pizza Hut. McDonald's alsohas a number of Play Food Sets with a Fast Food Cen-ter, a Food Cart with Play Food from the restaurant and"a miniature drive-through window replica featuring"a play cash register, deep fryer, grill, food accessoriessuch as burgers and fries, and a McFlurry machine. Anumber of branded board games have entered the mar-ket such as the Fischer-Price Oreo Matchin' MiddlesGame and Mattel's Teddy Grahams Game.3 1 Junk foodalso appears to have made its way into upscale tweenfashions, with a trendy line by a company called "JunkFood Clothing" which sells expensive t-shirts featuringsweets and other food products.

Food companies are also sponsoring events, such asmusic group tours, where they advertise heavily. Coca-Cola sponsors Fox's American Idol, which recentlylaunched an "Idols Tour" concert series in the summerof2006.32 Food companies run promotional tours thatgive away free product samples on the streets of majorcities from with specially outfitted vehicles. PopTartssent the world's largest (branded) climbing wall tour-ing the country for years. Motts juices sponsors concerttours by the musical group the Wiggles. Nabisco NillaWafers sponsored a banana pudding pie eating con-test at theme parks around the country. Powerade hasa national "hydration" tour. Nestl sponsored a "funzone" with a number of musical groups at theme parks,air shows, fairs, camps, zoos, and sporting events, andKellogg's has done an in-line skating tour to push itsCinnamon Krunchers to tween males.

A related tactic is viral, or peer-to-peer, marketing.Children are enlisted to serve as "brand representa-tives" to other kids, to talk up the product, give out freesamples, and help create buzzY3 Although originallyused more for music releases, fashion, and shoes, viralmarketing is now common with food products as well.Viral marketing firms enlist children to be in regu-lar relationship with them, by constructing programsthat give them titles (one firm uses the title "secretagent"), and keep in email contact. The Girls Intelli-gence Agency gets tween girls, beginning at about ageeight, to set up slumber parties at their homes to testand give out products.34 Proctor and Gamble's viralmarketing arm, Tremor, has a reported 240,000 youngpeople touting its products in everyday settings. 35 Viralmarketing is an increasingly popular form of market-ing in the children and teen marketplace.

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The Internet is another rapidly growing advertisingvenue. Census data indicate that the number of chil-dren using the Internet has risen dramatically. Amongchildren aged ten to thirteen the percentage onlinerose from 38% in 1998 to 65% in 2001. Among youthaged fourteen to seventeen the increase was from 51%to 75%.36 As a result, leading marketers are spendingmore of their advertising budgets online, in both theirown sites and through the major children's televisionnetworks, such as Nickelodeon, whose websites areheavy food marketers. A newly released study by theKaiser Family foundation, "It's Child's Play: Adver-gaming and Online Marketing of Food to Children,'"is the first extensive analysis of internet food mar-keting. It analyzed the content of 77 unique websitesfrom June through November 2005. A reported 85%of food brands that advertise through television havebranded websites marketing to children online. Inter-net advertising provides a more extensive and deeperparticipation by children since they are viewing theproduct for an unlimited and extended period of timethrough several different marketing vehicles. Theseinclude advergames, which integrate the food productor characters associated with the brand, promotions orsweepstakes, clubs, email listservs, and software whichallows the child to view television commercials online.Advergames were found on 73% of the websites stud-ied, while viral marketing - encouraging children tocontact their friends and peers and inform them abouta specific brand or product - was found on 64% of thesites. Other marketing strategies that were found in-clude: sweepstakes and promotions (found on 65% ofsites), instant access to television commercials (53%),incentives for product purchase such as free toys orother premiums (38%), and membership opportuni-ties (25%). Only about half (51%) of the websites hadnutrition information and only 18% of the websitesfollowed CARU's specific guidelines that state that anyadvertising content must be clearly identified.37

Schools have also become a centerpiece of the mar-keting arsenal. Snacks and processed food companiesspend a reported $750 million in marketing dollars inschools nationwide.38 A report released by the U.S. Gen-eral Accounting Office (GAO) in 2000 found that themost significant type of commercial activity in schoolswas food sales, primarily sales of soft drinks fromvending machines and short-term fundraising projectsales. At that time, more that one-third of elementaryschools, half of middle and junior high schools, andclose to three-fourths of senior high schools had con-tracts giving soft drink companies the rights to selltheir product at school.9 Fast food companies havegotten in on the action with incentive programs linkedto educational activities. These include McDonald's

"McSpellit Club" and Pizza Hut's "Book it." By usingfree or discounted foods as an incentive, the companiesreward children for reading or getting perfect scoreson spelling tests.40 Another major marketing effort inschools is through Channel One, which delivers a cur-rent events program plus two minutes of pure ads, to38% of middle and high schools in the U.S. 41 Until re-cently, there has been a high proportion of food ads onChannel One. In a study of one month in 1994 close to70% of the 45 food commercials were for food productsincluding fast foods, soft drinks, chips, and candy.42(Recently, Channel One, a target of activists for years,has lost most of its advertisers, and has been relyingon federal dollars for anti-drug and military recruit-ing ads.) Other in-school activities include food com-pany sponsored curricula, in which candy companies,spaghetti sauce brands, fast-food chains and the likepromote their brands in nutrition and science materi-als.43 Food marketing to children has literally becomea major part of public school curriculum.

Controversy about marketing in schools has intensi-fied in recent years, as the volume of marketing hasincreased. Proponents, who are typically superinten-dents, principals, and other administrators point to themoney and in-kind resources that corporations pro-vide. Critics argue that the actual amounts of moneyare often small and less than is promised, and that thebenefits do not outweigh the negative impacts, espe-cially when the products are junk food.44

Is Food Marketing Effective?Decades of studies show that food marketing to chil-dren is effective. In the late 1970s, Marvin Goldbergstudied differences between children who saw and didnot see television advertising and found that sugaredcereals were more likely to be present in the homes ofthe former.45 H. L. Taras and colleagues found that forchildren aged three to eight, weekly television view-ing time is significantly correlated with requests forspecified advertised products as well as overall caloricintake.46 More recently, Dina Borzekowski and ThomasRobinson's research on low-income pre-schoolersfound that even brief exposure to ads led children tochoose advertised food products more often.47 A studyof fourth and fifth graders found that increased televi-sion viewing is related to poor nutritional habits, evencontrolling for social and other factors.48

A comprehensive review of the impact of marketingwas recently done by the Institute of Medicine. A totalof 123 empirical studies covering a range of methodolo-gies were included in a systemic evidence review whosebasic question was how food and beverage marketinginfluences the diets and diet-related health status ofAmerican children. In view of the fact that detailed

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discussion of the findings are available in chapter fiveof the report, as well as a summary evidence table (Ap-pendix F-2) listing all the studies and their findings, wewill not provide a full discussion. In general, however,the review found that television advertising "influenceschildren to prefer and request high-calorie and low-nutrient foods and beverages,"49 and "influences theshort term consumption of children ages 2-12;' (withinsufficient evidence about teens).50 The strength ofthe evidence on whether TV ads influence the "usualdietary intake of children" varies by age, with strongerimpacts seen on younger children.51 It may be worthnoting that, far from undermining the claim that adsdo not influence dietary intake, the weakness or ab-sence of findings for older children and teens is to beexpected because of hysteresis in food preferences. Ifadvertising shapes preferences early on, it can becomea non-predictor in older children (having no significanteffects in the model). This is because both those whoare exposed to ads and those who are not will both havepreferences for advertised foods. Finally, the reportconcludes: "Statistically, there is strong evidence thatexposure to television advertising is associated withadiposity in children 2-11 years and teens ages 12-18years."52

Deteriorating Diets and Rising ObesityThe increase of marketing to children has coincidedwith significant deterioration in the healthfulness ofchildren's diets, higher caloric intake and a rapid in-crease in rates of obesity and overweight. The addi-tional calories are typically and more frequently com-ing from energy-dense snack foods lacking in nutrients,and children are receiving a declining fraction of theircalories from meals, which tend to be healthier thansnacks.53 Children's diets are now significantly deviat-ing from the recommended diet.- There has also beena dramatic rise in soft drink consumption. Between1965 and 1996, the per capita daily soft drink con-sumption for boys aged eleven to eighteen rose from179g to 520g, and from 148g to 337g for girls.55 Onecross-sectional study reported that school-age childrenwho consumed soft-drinks had a daily calorie intaketen percent higher than those who did not.56 And thewidely-reported prospective observational study byobesity researcher David Ludwig et al. found a 60%increased risk of developing childhood obesity in mid-dle-school aged children for every additional servingof soft drink consumed after controlling for potentiallyconfounding factors.57

Another important change is the growth of mealseaten outside the home, and fast food consumption inparticular. In the late 1970's, children ate 17% of theirmeals away from home and fast food accounted for

2% of their energy intake. By the mid to late 1990s,those figures had increased to 30% and 10%.53 Ludwigand his colleagues note that an average large-sized fastfood meal contains about 2200 kcal, an amount thatrequires running a complete marathon to burn off.59

Obesity rates among children have grown rapidly,with an estimated 25% of youth now reportedly obeseand in the eighty-fifth Body Mass Index (BMI) percen-tile. Fifteen percent fall into the ninety-fifth BMI per-centile. These rates have nearly doubled for childrenand tripled for teenagers since 1980.60 Rates of increasehave been roughly twice as high among racial minori-ties.61 These trends have been well documented.

Different Approaches to AdvertisingEffectivenessWhile there is considerable evidence that food adver-tising affects beliefs, preferences, diet, and diet-relatedhealth outcomes, there have been far fewer studies thatspell out the actual mechanisms of impact, and theliterature has not coalesced around one causal model.Among those who study advertising in general, viewsdiffer on what makes it effective, and the issue is notwell resolved. Early discussions of the creation of de-sire62 have been criticized for making the simplistic as-sumption that advertising can produce product desirein a kind of "hypodermic needle" process of injectingwant. Advertisers themselves object to this character-ization, arguing that they cannot create desire out ofwhole cloth, but are merely evoking pre-existing de-sires and preferences that already lurk inside the con-sumer.

This view is consistent with much of the literature.For example, some accounts argue that children haveinnate, evolutionarily driven tastes for foods high in fat,sugar and salt.6 3 These preferences may be triggeredby the visual cues of advertisements. Such approaches,as well as others in psychology, medicine, and pub-lic health are based on a stimulus/response model inwhich ads interact with innate processes to activateproduct desire or choice. In these accounts, food choiceis seen mainly in physiological or biological terms.64

Children's marketers typically operate with a modi-fied model of this type, in which they posit a set of in-nate "needs" and attempt to create ads whose messageis that the product will satisfy the need. Needs includelove, mastery, power, and glamour.65 Food advertis-ers are also heavy users of reward models in whichtoys, prizes, or other "premia" are given in return forpurchase. The most well-known example of this is theMcDonald's Happy Meal, noted above. It is also likelythat food advertisers know much more about how tostimulate desire than they share with outsiders. Almostall of their research is proprietary and unavailable to

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academic researchers. In the legal fight against the to-bacco companies, proprietary research revealed thatthe companies had considerable knowledge about theaddictiveness of their product and used product ma-nipulation and advertising to ensure demand.

Another advertising model, most common in eco-nomics, holds that ads provide information that helpsconsumers make optimal consumption choices. In thisapproach, ads do not affect desire at all, but merelyhelp consumers to make choices that best reflect anexogenous, or pre-determined set of preferences.

At the other end of the spectrum are interpretive,anthropological and sociological accounts of con-sumer desires. In these approaches, advertising is ef-fective through its intervention in powerful systemsof symbolic meaning that are at the root of how hu-mans understand the world and act in it.36 Advertising

egy is part of what got many toy companies and theirad agencies into legal trouble in the 1960s and 1970s- the ads frequently portrayed toys doing things theyreally could not. In the case of food, the intrinsic prod-uct benefit approach meant that the ad promised thefood would taste good. The implicit advertising modelwas thus either the economists' informational one, ora latent stimulus/response approach in which productcharacteristics were assumed to trigger desire. Sym-bolic messaging was rare.

In contrast, adult-oriented advertising had alreadybegun to reject the intrinsic product benefit model inthe 1960s and 1970s. This was partly due to the realitiesof marketing commodities in a mass consumer society.If, for example, Coke and Pepsi or Nike and Reebokbarely differ in terms of real product attributes, otheradvertising strategies are necessary to avoid damaging

Children's marketers posit a set of innate "needs" and attempt to create adswhose message is that the product will satisfy the need. Needs include love,mastery, power, and glamour. It is likely that food advertisers know much

more about how to stimulate desire than they share with outsiders.

messages that skillfully engage symbolic structures ofmeaning and identity formation motivate people toact (and spend). A recent example is Douglas Holt'scultural branding model, 67 which argues that the mostenduring and popular brands tap into existing culturalmyths by positing themselves as solutions to culturalcontradictions.

It is possible that the failure of the literature to settleon one model of advertising effectiveness is due to theco-existence of these different effective strategies byadvertisers. In the field of children's food marketing,we can find both stimulus/response ads, as well ascommercials which access underlying symbolic fields.We turn now to the latter, which we believe representsa relatively new and powerful approach to food mar-keting.

The Shift from Product Attributes toSymbolic Messages in Children's MarketingIn its early decades (1950s-1980s), children's advertis-ing was low-budget, drew on little research or creativetalent, and tended to follow well-established formulae.Children were not a lucrative market, and as a con-sequence companies did not commit large sums tocreate compelling advertising for them.68 In general,commercials conveyed intrinsic product benefits. Toycommercials tended to show children playing with thetoy, and focused on the things it could do. This strat-

price cutting. In the earlier decades of the 20th century,advertisers had turned to crude appeals to status posi-tioning and consumer insecurities (for example, con-sumers' fears of body odor or social isolation) to mar-ket these types of goods. 69 But these messages becameless effective as consumers' skepticism of advertising,particularly hard-sell techniques of industries suchas automobiles, began to grow in the late 1950s and1960s.70 Often dubbed the "creative revolution'" adver-tisers turned instead to more symbolically and cultur-ally-driven messages, building brand value on the basisof popularly-held cultural traits. They stressed brandimage with campaigns designed to convince consum-ers that Nike equals power and athleticism or Pepsi isthe brand of youth rebellion.

As Thomas Frank7l has argued, the core of the cre-ative revolution was an appeal to non-conformity andthe counter-cultural quality of "cool." The associationof a brand with "coolness" became a common strategyin adult and teen marketing. In the 1990s, with theexpansion of the children's market and rising expendi-tures on research and production as well as marketers'perceptions of children's growing sophistication, sym-bolic appeals to children became more feasible.72 In thelast 15 years it appears that children have increasinglybeen appealed to on the basis of the social value orcoolness of products. This symbolic positioning is usedfor virtually all products, not only obvious candidates

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such as fashion, footwear, or music. At first glance, Specific Themes in Symbolic Marketing:this extension may be unexpected in food - what is the Junk Food as Oppositionalconnection between "coolness" and a brand of yogurt As noted above, "cool" is the core of symbolic appealsor a candy bar or a condiment? However, if advertis- in children's advertising; however, cool is an expansiveers' insights are correct, the relationship is profound, category, which takes on a variety of specific meanings.as the "cool factor" has become a dominant messaging To understand bow to combat diet deterioration andstrategy. obesity, perhaps the most important of its manifes-

Content analyses of food marketing have tended to tations is the message that oppositional attitudes arefocus on analyzing the nature of the product, rather cool, that junk food is oppositional, and that there-than the type of messaging, so we do not have quanti- fore junk food is cool. This issue has been posed mosttative data to support the claim of a shift to symbolic intriguingly by anthropologist Allison James, whoseadvertising. However, the importance of this approach research was triggered by the accidental finding thatcame up repeatedly in Schor's interviews with indus- the British word for children's sweets, "kets," meanstry practitioners 73 and cursory viewing of commercials "rubbish" in adult dialect. "It is thus of great signifi-reveals numerous symbolic approaches. We are cur- cance that something which is despised and regardedrently conducting a study of food commercials seen by as diseased and inedible by the adult world should bechildren which analizes message content. Preliminary given great prestige as a particularly desirable form ofanalysis of 55 commercials reveals that 15, or about food by the child."75

To appreciate the context of James'work, a brief detour into childhoodFood advertisers have become sophisticated theories may be useful. The domi-

anthropologists. Their ads build on basic social nant, indeed hegemonic conceptual-relationships and the connections of food to those ization of humans assumes a biologi-

cally-based developmental processrelationships, and their power derives from these of growth from childhood to adoles-symbolic meanings. cence to adulthood. However, recent

social scientific and historical workhas shown that the very concept of

28%have a symbolicmessage as their primarytheme.74 the child is a social construction, and not merely aThese include the "cool factor,' as well as specific di- biological, or natural category. Historical and com-mensions of cool (such as "anti-adult" themes, or drug parative investigations reveal that children occupythemes, that we discuss below). Notably, this sample very different places in different societies. Philippecomes from children's television in the after-school and Aries' pioneering work showed that in pre-modernweekend morning time slots, times which are targeted Europe, the modern concept of the child didn't exist.to very young children, indicating that symbolic mes- Youth were mainly segregated until about age seven,sages have permeated even this demographic. We are at which point they were incorporated into society ascurrently conducting analyses of prime-time shows "little adults'"76 Childhood, as we know it, arose in theviewed heavily by older children, and expect even modern period, and reached its high mark in the latehigher levels of symbolic pitches. 19th and early 20th centuries, when children were

The shift to symbolic marketing of food is worth con- segregated from adults socially and symbolically. Thesidering for a moment. What it implies is that children hegemonic status of the "child" can be seen in the on-are being persuaded to eat particular foods, not on the going adult panic over the "disappearance of child-basis of their tastiness, or other benefits, but because hood" as adults bemoan the progressive breakdown ofof their place in a social matrix of meaning. As this the rigid child-adult distinctions that prevailed untilprocess expands, branded (i.e., junk) food comes to the second half of the 20th century.77 At the core of theoccupy an increasingly central position in children's social construction of the child is that it is defined insense of identity, their relationships to other children relation to - and often in opposition to - the categoryand adults, and the construction of meaning and value adult. For example, adults are corrupt; children arethat structures their lives. These dynamics are operat- innocent. Adults are competent; children are incom-ing alongside more widely recognized physiological petent. Adults are rational; children are irrational.processes such as sugar habituation, but have been less Allison James' findings reproduce these categoriza-recognized in the literature. tions. She finds that the names, colors, sensations, tex-

tures and shapes of British children's sweets, or kets,

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make these candies unpalatable for adults, who pre-fer not to eat foods which are named after robots, areneon-colored, or pop and fizz in the mouth. And the in-edibility of these products for adults - their "rubbish-y"quality - makes them especially appealing to chil-dren.78 Indeed, she finds that children exhibit strongpreferences for these sweets and reject the "meals"given by adults. Eating kets is an important mechanismby which children define themselves, a "metaphoricchewing up of adult order."79 James notes that food (incontrast to sweets) "belongs to the adult world and issymbolic of the adult's control over children."Io Thisis an example of a larger point that anthropologistsof food have made, which is that ideas about edibilityand categorizations of food are tied to larger symbolicdistinctions and categorizations.

Although James was not addressing the contempo-rary discourse around junk food (kets are not advertiseditems), she might well have been. Food advertisers havebecome sophisticated anthropologists, working fromthe symbolic structure discussed by James. Their adsbuild on basic social relationships and the connectionsof food to those relationships, and their power derivesfrom these symbolic meanings. The adult/child fieldis a pervasive one. For example, in our preliminaryanalysis of 55 commercials, 29 included both adult andchild characters.81

These ads often portray children and adults as oc-cupying separate and frequently oppositional symbolicspaces. The strategy typically aligns the marketer (orthe company) with the audience, and against adults.This "anti-adultism" is evident in commercial mes-sages in which adults are portrayed as stupid, uncool,boring, nerdy, out of touch, controlling, or evil.A2 Adsoften transport children to adult-free utopian spaces,devoid of the unwelcome stresses and pressures causedby adults. Classic examples of this technique includea Starburst (candy) commercial in a classroom whichgoes back and forth between a drab, black-and-whiteformat in which a very nerdy teacher is facing the classand in control, to a riotous, colorful party atmosphereof candy consumption when his back is turned andthe students assume control over the classroom. A re-cent Captain Crunch cereal commercial portrays anominous, "battle-axe" babysitter arriving to two defi-ant children. Of course they conquer her with the aidof the cereal.

It may be worth noting that the approach to moth-ers is almost diametrically opposite. When addressingmothers, advertisers tap into the symbolic associationof food with maternal love and concern, associatinggiving food with caring for a child, making a warm,emotional connection, or providing nutritious sub-stances.

Junk Food as a "Drug"The symbolic field of adult/child relationships under-lies a high proportion of contemporary junk food ad-vertising. However, these relationships are often onlythe backdrop for a more specific message. The asso-ciation ofjunk foods with energy, power, physiologicaltransformation or an altered state is another commontactic.

Wynne Tyree, a longtime children's food marketer,explains what she has found over many years of focusgroup and interviews about energy-dense foods:

Kids say they use sugar like adults use coffee - togive them a boost. Since coffee isn't allowed, andthey have no other means to 'get them going' or'give them energy, they use soda, chocolate, candyand sugary fruit drinks. It gives them the jolts theysay they need throughout the day.83

Tyree reports that this is a pervasive finding for manytypes of food brands and products. When one of theauthors (Schor) sat in on focus groups with tweens for asugary drink, she found that the children talked abouttheir desire to get "hyper," or to "bounce off the walls."They said they wanted Coke because it has "caffeine."They were well versed in and took great delight in thetransformative properties of sugar and caffeine.84 Notsurprisingly, the soft drink companies have heavily pro-moted the concepts of high-energy and hyper. Pepsi'sMountain Dew, with its Code Red brand, is one exam-ple, with its themes of extreme sports and excess. So isthe rise of "energy drinks" such as Red Bull, with theirhigh levels of caffeine and appeals to youth.

What Tyree does not say, but what is implicit in heranalysis, is that junk food is to a certain extent beingpositioned symbolically to children as a "drug." In ourpreliminary analysis of food commercials, we foundthat two of the 55 had subtle associations to drugs asa dominant theme.85 The association to drugs is partlybased on the transformative physiological processesassociated with high-sugar foods, in which they pro-duce positive sensations (as drugs do), make the userfeel differently. An example is a Dunkin' Donuts com-mercial showing bored people in an office. The scene isre-run after they drink a smoothie and their mood hasswitched to happy. Subtle associations are also found inads portraying rock music or utopian environments.

A second theme is that junk foods are increasinglybeing marked by adults as dangerous, illicit and forbid-den substances. Like many drugs, the pleasurabilityof junk food is acknowledged, but it is seen to be ad-dictive, and its ingestion is accompanied by seriousbad consequences (obesity, diabetes, ill-health). Adsrecognize this forbidden fruit dimension of the product

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in order to enhance its desirability to young viewers.Candy ads sometimes use this illicit pleasure theme.On the other hand, this is a double-edged sword formarketers, because there are countervailing reasons toportray their foods as healthy and wholesome. They areinvolved in a delicate balancing act between raising theappeal of their products by associating them with thequalities of pleasure and danger, and at the same timeattempting to avoid associations of disease and decay.

There is a strong analogy here to tobacco, which haslong been advertised on the basis of its symbolic value.Cigarette smoking is socially coded as "cool," with avariety of more specific associations that are the basisof this cool status. These include defiance of author-ity, seductiveness, creativity, hedonism, and masculin-ity.86 These social meanings are deeply ingrained inour culture, are often held unconsciously, and serve asa powerful reservoir of emotion and meaning whichadvertisers use to induce sales of the product. Further-more, tobacco is often symbolically associated withother drugs, such as alcohol and caffeine.

The relationship between tobacco and junk food is notmerely symbolic. Since Phillip Morris acquired Seven-Up in 1978, tobacco companies have owned some ofthenation's largest junk food marketers. These include the1988 purchase of Kraft, also by Phillip Morris, the 1989buyout of Nabisco by tobacco company R. J. Reynolds,and its subsequent 2000 acquisition by Phillip Morris.Phillip Morris has also acquired cereal-maker Gen-eral Foods, Swiss confectioner Suchard, Taco Bell, andMiller Brewing Company.87 Significantly, participantsfrom the legal fights against tobacco are now active(on both sides) in struggles about junk food marketingto children, and newspaper headlines have drawn theconnection. "Is Junk Food the New Tobacco?" becamea frequent refrain in 2003 as the conflict about junkfood began to heat up.,,

Connections to Existing ResearchSymbolic messaging has not been addressed muchin the literature on childhood obesity, but there areliteratures that are related to this line of argument.One body of studies looks at how children respond toparental restrictions or disapproval of junk foods anddiscovers what is colloquially known as the "forbid-den fruit syndrome" - forbidden foods are more desir-able.89 For example, Jennifer 0. Fisher and Leann L.Birch have found that maternal restrictions on high-fat, high-sugar foods lead daughters to increase theirconsumption of these foods when they are in environ-ments where access is unlimited.90 Thomas Robinsonand colleagues, using selfreports of over seven hun-dred third graders, have found that parental control ofchildren's food intake is inversely related to weight in

girls, although not in boys.91 Another study found thatpre-school children are more attracted to foods that arenot available to them, and that the effect was strongerwith children whose mothers were more restrictive. 92

A third found that five-year-old girls are inclined todo the opposite of what they think their parents desirewith respect to junk food consumption.93

The Debate about Food Marketing toChildrenSince the publication, in late 2001, of the SurgeonGeneral's report on the obesity epidemic, the debateabout junk food marketing has heated up on a numberof fronts. Medical professionals, children's advocatesand parents began to organize against in-school junkfood marketing. By the summer of 2003, more thanthirty state legislatures were considering bills thatwould require fast food labeling or restrictions on in-school junk food sales.94 Soft drinks, which researchhad shown to have a unique impact on obesity, havebeen singled out for attention.95 School districts beganto reject exclusive contracts with Coke and Pepsi, andby 2006, former President Bill Clinton helped brokera deal that industry claimed would eventually reducethe presence of carbonated soft drinks.96 A number oflawsuits have also been filed, claiming damages fromcompanies such as McDonald's, for marketing harmfuland addictive food to children. In Massachusetts, theCenter for Science in the Public Interest has initiated alegal process against Kellogg and Viacom, parent com-pany of Nickelodeon, a major children's food marketer,accusing them of harm associated with excessive levelsof food advertising.97

The food industry responded to these attacks witha multi-pronged strategy. Companies were aggressivein attempting to deflect attention from food, arguingthat lack of exercise was the reason for rising obesity,not their products. Coke and Pepsi began sponsor-ing fitness activities, and McDonald's handed out freepedometers. This was reminiscent of Big Tobacco'slongstanding claims that tobacco does not cause lungcancer. Indeed, the food companies' initial responsesto their opponents followed the tobacco strategy fairlyfaithfully.98 The food industry, which gives heavily toCongress and the Bush Administration, enlisted thelatter to promote its position, which the Administra-tion has done, both domestically and abroad. In 2001,the Administration undermined a World Health Or-ganization (WHO) anti-obesity initiative.99 The res-taurant and beverage companies also founded andgenerously funded a political front-group, the Centerfor Consumer Freedom, which ridicules public healthactivists (calling them "food fascists"), and argues thatefforts to curb obesity are anti-freedom.100

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More recently, some companies have realized thatthey cannot afford the negative reputation associatedwith making children fat, so they have downplayedtheir initial claims that food doesn't matter, and tried toposition themselves as part of the solution to the obe-sity epidemic. Kraft gained headlines by claiming thatit would stop in-school activities,10 1 and the marketingof the least nutritious of its brands, such as Oreos, toyoung children. McDonald's, Pepsi, and others haveintroduced new, "healthier" products. Soft drink com-panies are trying to sell sweetened fruit drinks andenergy drinks, perhaps hoping that consumers will(mistakenly) think these are significantly differentfrom sodas.

Industry has also argued in favor of, and begun topractice pro-nutrition advertising to children. Whilethese efforts have not yet been systematically docu-mented, they are at the core of the industry response.Little criticism of these efforts has surfaced; however,there are reasons to think this is a problematic response.At the most general level, one can question the wisdomof using advertising as the solution to a problem thathas itself been defined as stemming from, among otherthings, excessive advertising. More specifically, studiesof anti-tobacco advertising have found that governmentcampaigns against smoking are effective, but that in-dustry-funded campaigns are either neutral or lead toincreased levels of smoking (among youth).102 A 1984study of kindergarten children found that ten days ofexposure to pro-nutrition messages affected recall andinformation, but not preferences or consumption.103

Second, the analysis of symbolic messaging abovesuggests that appeals to eat "healthy food" risk having itlabeled as adult-sanctioned, and therefore undesirable.This positioning plays into the powerful symbolic en-vironment the companies are attempting to reproducethrough their regular advertising, and may, paradoxi-cally, reinforce the effectiveness of those attempts. Boththe marketers' deliberate symbolic positioning of theirproducts as forbidden and oppositional, and parents' orhealth professionals' coding of them as unhealthy (dis-eased) may make these products particularly desirable,and render their opposites (healthy foods) unpalatable.At the very least, before governments, health profes-sionals, advocacy organizations, and others jump onthe bandwagon of pro-nutritional messaging, its ef-ficacy should be carefully studied.

Along these lines, the track record of both familyand in-school intervention programs which focus onbehavior modification and pro-nutritional messagingsuggests that these are relatively ineffective strate-gies.1"' However, one documented intervention thathas yielded reduced BMI for youth is an in-schooltelevision reduction program.105 Whether the positive

results from this study are due to reduced ad exposure,activity substitution, lower food consumption duringtelevision viewing, or other benefits is not known.

SummaryThe combination of evidence on the effectiveness offood marketing in inducing consumption, as well as theineffectiveness of educational interventions suggeststhat one key to effective change will be a reductionin advertising exposure. While industry has resolutelyresisted increased healthy advertising, children's ad-vocates should stress the necessity of reducing screentime, getting food marketing out of schools, and clean-ing up the internet. Particularly in low-income areas,these changes will require public support and collectiveaction.

Children's exposure to food marketing has explodedin recent years, along with rates of obesity and over-weight. Children of color and from low-income fami-lies are disproportionately at risk for both marketingexposure and overweight. Comprehensive reviewsof the literature show that advertising is effective inchanging children's food preferences and diets. Herewe have surveyed the scope and scale of current mar-keting practices and have focused on the growing useof symbolic appeals. These portray food within perva-sive symbolic fields, such as oppositional relations be-tween children and adults. Such approaches place foodbrands at the center of themes such as finding an iden-tity, and feeling powerful and in control. These themesare so potent because they are central to children intheir development and constitution of self. Reductionof exposure to marketing will undoubtedly be a centralpart of any successful anti-obesity strategy.

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TITLE: From Tastes Great to Cool: Children’s Food Marketingand the Rise of th

SOURCE: Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 35 no1 Spr 2007PAGE(S): 10-21

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