by Amy Ustjanauskas
In the past forty years, there has been a substantial increase in the consumption of soft drinks among 2 to 18 year olds. This means they are consuming a lot of extra calories. For every extra can of sugary beverages consumed by children each day, their odds of becoming obese increase 1.6 times.
The role soft drinks play in childhood obesity has been getting a lot of press lately, so I was surprised when I came upon Fanta’s new marketing agenda, which outwardly targets children through mobile advertising.
Fanta, the soft drink company, came out with a bunch of new applications, games, and interactive features for the cell phone, all targeting children. They have a new virtual reality tennis cell phone game and offer kid-friendly wall papers for phones. The feature that surprised me the most was the mobile application: Stealth Sound System, advertised as, “Get your volume levels right so only you can hear it and adults can't.”
The application lets kids communicate via high pitched sounds that are only audible to people under the age of 20. Children can send high pitched messages to one another such as “hello,” “that’s cool,” and “let’s meet up,” under the radar of parents and adults. You couldn’t find a better example of an unhealthy food company outwardly targeting children with advertising, as children are the only population who can even use this!
Children will of course be intrigued by this application, and the way it is packaged. I doubt they will even realize that they are being exposed to advertising. The application has already been marketed on 50 million cans of Fanta in Great Britain, and has had 400,000 downloads to date.
It is interesting to note that this marketing campaign was launched in Great Britain, where there is a ban on junk food advertisements on children’s television programs. This Fanta marketing example demonstrates the need for countries to acknowledge the other forms of advertising, in addition to television, that children are exposed to when trying to limit unhealthy food marketing to children. Companies are utilizing many channels in their marketing endeavors, so our counter-efforts must reflect this reality.
by Amy Ustjanauskas
The role soft drinks play in childhood obesity has been getting a lot of press lately, so I was surprised when I came upon Fanta’s new marketing agenda, which outwardly targets children through mobile advertising.
Fanta, the soft drink company, came out with a bunch of new applications, games, and interactive features for the cell phone, all targeting children. They have a new virtual reality tennis cell phone game and offer kid-friendly wall papers for phones. The feature that surprised me the most was the mobile application: Stealth Sound System, advertised as, “Get your volume levels right so only you can hear it and adults can't.”
The application lets kids communicate via high pitched sounds that are only audible to people under the age of 20. Children can send high pitched messages to one another such as “hello,” “that’s cool,” and “let’s meet up,” under the radar of parents and adults. You couldn’t find a better example of an unhealthy food company outwardly targeting children with advertising, as children are the only population who can even use this!
Children will of course be intrigued by this application, and the way it is packaged. I doubt they will even realize that they are being exposed to advertising. The application has already been marketed on 50 million cans of Fanta in Great Britain, and has had 400,000 downloads to date.
It is interesting to note that this marketing campaign was launched in Great Britain, where there is a ban on junk food advertisements on children’s television programs. This Fanta marketing example demonstrates the need for countries to acknowledge the other forms of advertising, in addition to television, that children are exposed to when trying to limit unhealthy food marketing to children. Companies are utilizing many channels in their marketing endeavors, so our counter-efforts must reflect this reality.