Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents - Federal Trade ...

Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents
the product reached more than 30 million teens, sales of Pop-Tarts increased 26.2%, and 60% of teens and
tweens who were aware of the brand tie-in with American Idol said they felt better about Pop-Tarts).
34. Radio Disney appears to be the only commercial radio station directed at children. Of course, another criterion
in the Special Order for reporting child-directed radio expenditures was whether a marketing plan specifically
indicated that the radio advertising was intended to reach children under age 12.
35. Word-of-mouth marketing occurs when companies provide financial or product incentives to non-employees
to encourage them to promote a food product or brand to other consumers.
36. Company-sponsored digital promotional messages that consumers can interact with and pass along to others
is considered viral marketing. This includes content developed for video, audio, or image file-sharing websites,
company-sponsored blogs or social networking profiles, and other content posted on the Internet that is
intended to be sent from one consumer to another, such as “send-to-a-friend” emails.
37. The word-of-mouth and viral expenditures are under-reported because many companies stated that they were
unable to segregate viral marketing activities from their website expenditures. An example is the common
and popular “send-to-a-friend” feature used on child- and teen-directed websites. Companies reported the
costs associated with “send-to-a-friend” features as part of their website expenditures.
38. When reporting website expenditures, many companies noted that the company-sponsored websites existed
prior to 2006 and, thus, the only costs consisted of the design and development changes to the website, if any,
in 2006.
39. Advergames are interactive online games on food company websites that incorporate a food or beverage
product into the game content.
40. As noted above, the companies reported most viral marketing expenditures (such as their “send-to-a-friend”
features) as expenditures for their company-sponsored websites. As a result, the majority of the expenditures
reported in this category represents word-of-mouth marketing. Interestingly, 100% of the viral marketing
reported was directed to youth.
41. The carbonated and non-carbonated beverage categories reported a total of $96,000 in child-directed wordof-mouth
expenditures, but this amount was almost 100% duplicative of the larger amounts that these categories
reported as teen-directed expenditures.
42. When reporting packaging expenditures, companies were required to report only those costs associated with
the design and development of changes in product packaging, but were not required to report manufacturing
costs or the cost of packaging materials. For in-store advertising and promotions, companies were told
to report the costs associated with all displays and promotions at the retail site, including the offering of
free samples and allowances paid to facilitate shelf placement or merchandise displays. Many companies
explained that their promotional funds paid to retailers are not targeted to a specific age group. Some companies,
however, did report expenditures for specific promotional displays, in locations such as the end of a
supermarket aisle, that used thematic content appealing to children or adolescents.
43. Child-directed packaging and in-store expenditures for snacks equaled 21% of the companies’ total expenditures
on packaging and in-store marketing for the reported snack brands; the proportion for restaurant food
was 24%, for candy/frozen desserts was 30%, for prepared foods was 40%, and for breakfast cereals was
65% of the total packaging and in-store expenditures for the reported brands.
44. See Section III.C for a discussion of the market research submitted by the companies regarding the importance
of premiums in youth-directed marketing.
45. These chains were: McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chuck E. Cheese (a dine-in restaurant), Pizza
Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Long John Silver, Wingstreet, and A&W Restaurants. The Select QSRs accounted for
nearly three-quarters (73.6%) of all kids’ meals with toys sold to children ages 12 and under during 2006.
Source: The NPD Group/CREST.
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