AU Professor Details Digital Marketing Practices

Food and Beverage Industry Fly Under the Radar to Lure Young Customers



WASHINGTON, DC (May 17, 2007) -- Food and beverage companies are using the latest digital media technologies to promote their products to children and adolescents, according to a report released today by American University professor Kathryn Montgomery, along with the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Berkeley Media Studies Group. The report, Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age, documents how major food, soft drink and fast food brands are deploying a panoply of new techniques, including cell phones, instant messaging, video games, user-generated video, and three-dimensional virtual worlds, to target children and adolescents. These efforts often fly under the radar of parents. The report also reveals a range of new digital strategies marketers have devised for targeting multicultural youth, including African Americans and Hispanics.



Citing the report, consumer and health groups today called on the Federal Trade Commission to expand its investigation of food and beverage marketing to children to include such digital activities.



Among the examples cited in the 98-page report are the following:



Several hundred McDonald's restaurants in California have captured the attention of young cell phone users by sending them instant electronic coupons in response to a text message sent to a special phone number.

As part of its "My Coke Rewards" program, Coke drinkers have used special codes to enter Web sites that offered downloadable ring tones and "amazing sports and entertainment experiences." In return, savvy marketers can profile the behavior of their young customers.

Food marketers have invited users of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to become "friends" with popular characters like the Burger King, who gives away free episodes of popular Fox television shows.

Wendy's has tried to fool YouTube fans with commercials that look like videos. In "Molly Grows Up," a young girl orders her first 99-cent Junior Bacon cheeseburger and Frosty.

The Mars candy company has attracted young visitors to its "Instant Def" site with songs by Black-Eyed Peas. Once there, it's hard to ignore the Snickers candy bars woven seamlessly into each "webisode."




"Digital technologies are fundamentally transforming how food and beverage companies do business with children and adolescents in the twenty-first century," explained AU's Montgomery. "We urge the Federal Trade Commission to include the full range of new media strategies identified in this report in its investigation of contemporary food marketing practices." Added Jeff Chester, the CDD's executive director and co-author of the report, "As this digital marketing system moves swiftly into place, we have a relatively brief period to establish policies and marketing standards that could help prevent today's young people--and future generations--from suffering the serious health consequences of poor nutrition."



The report calls on the FTC to compel companies to provide information on several specific practices, including the use of profiling tools like cookies and tags; psychosocial research; social-network campaigns; user-generated content; immersive media; and avatar-based techniques.



Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest endorsed the report, noting in particular the relationship between the marketing of food and beverage products to children and the growing incidence of childhood obesity. "When is the last time you saw an ad for broccoli aimed at children?" Jacobsen asked.



Sonya Grier, a professor in AU's Kogod School of Business, described the development of marketing strategies devised specifically to target minority children. This is a significant trend, she explained, as African American and Hispanic children are considered particularly vulnerable to targeted marketing tactics, and suffer disproportionately from health problems associated with poor nutrition.



Kathryn Montgomery teaches in the AU School of Communication. Her efforts during the 1990s, working with the CDD's Chester, led to the passage of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). A nationally recognized media scholar and advocate, her first book, Target: Prime Time, a groundbreaking history of the relationship between interest groups and network television, was published in 1989. Her new book, Generation Digital, out this summer from MIT Press, examines how the new media landscape is changing the nature of childhood and adolescence and analyzes recent political debates that have shaped both policy and practice in today's digital culture.



Jeff Chester, founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, has been a leading public-interest media advocate for more than twenty years. His book, Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy, was published earlier this year. Co-founder of the Telecommunications Policy Roundtable in 1991, Chester also played a key role in fighting proposals to eliminate ownership rules in the broadcasting, newspaper, and cable industries during the debate on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That year, Newsweek named him one of the Internet's fifty most influential people.



For more information on the report, including the executive summary, full text and interactive visual examples, go to www.digitalads.org/home.php.