Moves to restrict advertising's nag factor are likely to be contested by the industry, writes Jo Chandler.
AdvertisementWHY won't kids take "no" for an answer?
Because they have learnt to nag from the experts. There's the persistence nag, known as "the whine". It goes like this: "Mum/Dad I really WANT the Happy Meal/Barbie/chocolate)." And there's the "importance" nag: "Mum/Dad I really NEED the Happy Meal/Barbie/chocolate."
Knowing which nag to use most effectively, and tailoring it to parents' vulnerabilities, was a largely secret science until one of the most powerful media buyers in the US, Lucy Hughes, the director of strategy for Initiative Media, boasted about her organisation's work on "the nag factor".
The nag factor provided a solution to a problem that had vexed marketers for years, wrote Joel Bakan, a professor of law at the University of British Columbia, in his book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.
"How can money be extracted from young children who want to buy products but have no money of their own? Advertisements must be aimed not at getting them to buy things but at getting them to nag their parents to buy things."
Hughes's company found that from 20 per cent to 40 per cent of purchases of food, movies, games, etc, would not have occurred unless a child had nagged. "Kids are amazing when they watch TV," she told Bakan. "They're paying attention to the advertising."
Her research exposed four kinds of parents: 1) "bare necessities" types, with little inclination to buy; 2) "kids' pals"; 3) "indulgers" - often working mums or divorced dads; and 4) "conflicted", who don't want to but will. "The kids nag the first group with the importance of the product. They nag the other three groups with persistence," the book revealed.
All this may provide some strange comfort to parents. They're not pushovers, just unwitting pawns of the dynamic, disrobing science of marketing. It may also temper any excitement at the revelation this week that the advertising industry is considering a code of conduct that would ban "pester power" in the marketing of food to children. The fine print would restrict the ban to a narrow, primitive kind of "pester" - outlawing a direct appeal to get children to ask mum to buy X. Hughes's pervasive nag strategies won't strike too many impediments under the foreshadowed code.
The influence of food advertisers, tactics like "pester power", the increasing sophistication of their campaigns, and the contribution their products make to the expanding girth of generation O (for obese) will all receive scrutiny in the next couple of months.
Driving the debate is a meeting in July of state and federal health ministers with the advertising industry to discuss junk food advertising and obesity. Inflaming it is a new book from Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, and whose latest treatise, Chew On This, equates marketing cheeseburgers to children with flogging them tobacco or alcohol.
Health promotion organisations, nutrition lobbyists ("food fascists" to their opponents) and parent groups are pushing hard for bans on advertising food of questionable or negligible nutritional value to children on television, claiming the present co-regulatory environment is not working. Advertisers are moving to head off the threat with their own three-pronged campaign: advocating a tougher climate of self-regulation; questioning the scientific case that advertising food makes young people fat; and querying the influence advertising has on children.
These are issues being grappled with around the world, preoccupying British regulators and the US Senate. In Australia, the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, has been forthright that it is the job of parents, not regulators, to determine what children are invited to eat. But the states are indicating a tougher line, with Victoria this week moving to ban the sale of soft drinks in school canteens by the end of the year, and the NSW Health Minister, John Hatzistergos, urging federal action to address the "clear link between junk food advertising aimed at our children, childrens' diet and obesity".
It's this kind of statement, underpinning the push for advertising restrictions, which will be tested in the inevitable food fight before the ministers' meeting. Expect lots of science and spin.
A 25-year ban in Quebec, Canada, on advertising fast food to children - assisted by the social barrier of the province's French language - has had no impact whatsoever on obesity rates, argues Collin Segelov, the executive director of the Australian Association of National Advertisers, and champion of the tougher self-regulation push.
His organisation has spent a year drafting a marketing code which would set the international benchmark for advertisers, building on what he says is already a culture of responsibility in the Australian market. He was in Melbourne this week arguing the case to the Victorian Government.
"We are well ahead of governments in recognising a problem and doing something about it," says Segelov. The code requires that advertising be honest and truthful; that it be about the product and not about some associated benefit from the product (i.e., the toy in the Happy Meal); and that it can't claim benefits that are unreal.
But his bottom line against constraints on ads is that "there is no junk food - only junk diet". If you want to eat hamburgers every day, there will be consequences. "We're talking about responsible communication to consumers. There is no health risk in eating a hamburger or a packet of lollies," he says. "It is the rate of consumption."
Blaming weight gain on under-activity rather than overeating has been a key plank in the response of the food and ad industries to the obesity epidemic, but they received a shake-up last week with the publication of a study of 5500 NSW students that found overeating, not lack of exercise, was the main culprit.
The study focused on fitness rather than overall exercise, counters Segelov. Being overweight was the result of a complex equation of diet and exercise and the advertising industry had recognised the importance of promoting healthy exercise with a $10 million investment in the national "Eat Well, Play Well, Live Well" campaign.
Such efforts were fed by a desire - and the need - for the advertising industry to be seen as ethical and responsible, says Russel Howcroft, the chairman of the Advertising Federation of Australia. "I think we all accept there is an obesity issue," he says, and that part of it has got to do with what is consumed, but the issue is complicated by other social issues.
He forsees energetic debate inside and outside the industry on what constitutes "pester power" in terms of framing a self-regulatory code, but resists enforced regulation in an industry which is heavily regulated and provides mechanisms for complaint, review and removal of false or deceptive ads. "It is crazy, isn't it, to imagine [fast] food is being equated to tobacco," says Howcroft. "It is really interesting that it has got to that point."
Driving the debate is a meeting in July of state and federal health ministers with the advertising industry to discuss junk food advertising and obesity. Inflaming it is a new book from Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, and whose latest treatise, Chew On This, equates marketing cheeseburgers to children with flogging them tobacco or alcohol.
Health promotion organisations, nutrition lobbyists ("food fascists" to their opponents) and parent groups are pushing hard for bans on advertising food of questionable or negligible nutritional value to children on television, claiming the present co-regulatory environment is not working. Advertisers are moving to head off the threat with their own three-pronged campaign: advocating a tougher climate of self-regulation; questioning the scientific case that advertising food makes young people fat; and querying the influence advertising has on children.
These are issues being grappled with around the world, preoccupying British regulators and the US Senate. In Australia, the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, has been forthright that it is the job of parents, not regulators, to determine what children are invited to eat. But the states are indicating a tougher line, with Victoria this week moving to ban the sale of soft drinks in school canteens by the end of the year, and the NSW Health Minister, John Hatzistergos, urging federal action to address the "clear link between junk food advertising aimed at our children, childrens' diet and obesity".
It's this kind of statement, underpinning the push for advertising restrictions, which will be tested in the inevitable food fight before the ministers' meeting. Expect lots of science and spin.
A 25-year ban in Quebec, Canada, on advertising fast food to children - assisted by the social barrier of the province's French language - has had no impact whatsoever on obesity rates, argues Collin Segelov, the executive director of the Australian Association of National Advertisers, and champion of the tougher self-regulation push.
His organisation has spent a year drafting a marketing code which would set the international benchmark for advertisers, building on what he says is already a culture of responsibility in the Australian market. He was in Melbourne this week arguing the case to the Victorian Government.
"We are well ahead of governments in recognising a problem and doing something about it," says Segelov. The code requires that advertising be honest and truthful; that it be about the product and not about some associated benefit from the product (i.e., the toy in the Happy Meal); and that it can't claim benefits that are unreal.
But his bottom line against constraints on ads is that "there is no junk food - only junk diet". If you want to eat hamburgers every day, there will be consequences. "We're talking about responsible communication to consumers. There is no health risk in eating a hamburger or a packet of lollies," he says. "It is the rate of consumption."
Blaming weight gain on under-activity rather than overeating has been a key plank in the response of the food and ad industries to the obesity epidemic, but they received a shake-up last week with the publication of a study of 5500 NSW students that found overeating, not lack of exercise, was the main culprit.
The study focused on fitness rather than overall exercise, counters Segelov. Being overweight was the result of a complex equation of diet and exercise and the advertising industry had recognised the importance of promoting healthy exercise with a $10 million investment in the national "Eat Well, Play Well, Live Well" campaign.
Such efforts were fed by a desire - and the need - for the advertising industry to be seen as ethical and responsible, says Russel Howcroft, the chairman of the Advertising Federation of Australia. "I think we all accept there is an obesity issue," he says, and that part of it has got to do with what is consumed, but the issue is complicated by other social issues.
He forsees energetic debate inside and outside the industry on what constitutes "pester power" in terms of framing a self-regulatory code, but resists enforced regulation in an industry which is heavily regulated and provides mechanisms for complaint, review and removal of false or deceptive ads. "It is crazy, isn't it, to imagine [fast] food is being equated to tobacco," says Howcroft. "It is really interesting that it has got to that point."
But his bottom line against constraints on ads is that "there is no junk food - only junk diet". If you want to eat hamburgers every day, there will be consequences. "We're talking about responsible communication to consumers. There is no health risk in eating a hamburger or a packet of lollies," he says. "It is the rate of consumption."
Blaming weight gain on under-activity rather than overeating has been a key plank in the response of the food and ad industries to the obesity epidemic, but they received a shake-up last week with the publication of a study of 5500 NSW students that found overeating, not lack of exercise, was the main culprit.
The study focused on fitness rather than overall exercise, counters Segelov. Being overweight was the result of a complex equation of diet and exercise and the advertising industry had recognised the importance of promoting healthy exercise with a $10 million investment in the national "Eat Well, Play Well, Live Well" campaign.
Such efforts were fed by a desire - and the need - for the advertising industry to be seen as ethical and responsible, says Russel Howcroft, the chairman of the Advertising Federation of Australia. "I think we all accept there is an obesity issue," he says, and that part of it has got to do with what is consumed, but the issue is complicated by other social issues.
He forsees energetic debate inside and outside the industry on what constitutes "pester power" in terms of framing a self-regulatory code, but resists enforced regulation in an industry which is heavily regulated and provides mechanisms for complaint, review and removal of false or deceptive ads. "It is crazy, isn't it, to imagine [fast] food is being equated to tobacco," says Howcroft. "It is really interesting that it has got to that point."
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