It's under the radar for most parents, school nutritionists, and health care providers, but food and beverage companies are using the latest digital media technology to promote their products to children and adolescents, according to a report released May 17.

In a 98-page report, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Berkeley Media Studies Group urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate digital marketing to children, including such examples as:

• Young cell phone users in California are urged to text-message to a special phone number to receive an instant electronic coupon for a free McFlurry dessert;
• A Coca-Cola program offers special codes in its products enabling young people to access a website where they can earn rewards such as downloadable ring tones and "amazing sports and entertainment experiences";
• Wendy's places videos on YouTube, including one in which a young girl is shown ordering "her first 99-cent Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and Frosty";
• The Mars Candy Company enlists the musical group Black Eyed Peas to make a series of "webisodes" to promote Snickers bars to teens;
• Food marketers move into MySpace and other social networking sites, inviting children and teens to become friends with popular spokescharacters such as "Burger King."

The people who analyze what is termed "interactive marketing" have words for all those techniques—they are called "behavioral profiling," "commercializing online communities," "commercials masking as videos," and "brand-saturated environments." The important thing about them is that they push foods and drinks that parents and schools may be trying to discourage kids from consuming, the media groups say, at a time of heightened concern about obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The report notes that the audience for interactive marketing is large and growing.  In "generation digital," the report claims,

• Approximately 70 percent of children 8-11 go online from home, and of those, 37 percent use instant messaging and 35 percent play games;
• Ninety-three percent of 12-to-17-year-olds use the Internet and more than half of online teens use social networks;
• Of the more than 25 million 12-17-year-olds in the United States, 20 million are gamers;
• A majority of 13-to17-year-olds (57 percent) have cell phones, and teens are more likely than other mobile users to use their phones to access shopping guides and to get movie and restaurant information;
• Fifty-seven percent of teenagers post their own "user-generated content" on the Web, including photos, stories, artwork, audio, and video.

In response to public pressure, a number of food manufacturers and media companies have recently launched high-profile initiatives to improve their image, including campaigns to increase health and fitness in children. Kraft Foods, for example, has announced that it will cease advertising some of its most popular brands—including Kool-Aid, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Lunchables—to children between the ages of 6 and 11 on television, in radio, and in print media.

But "while these efforts are commendable, they must be viewed within the broader context of the changing nature of advertising and marketing," the report charges. In fact, the report alleges, as food and beverage companies announce changes in their TV advertising, they have already begun to shift their marketing into the broad new array of new media efforts. "The eyeballs have moved," a Burger King executive told a 2006 national conference of advertisers.

"The rapid growth of the Internet and proliferation of digital media are fundamentally changing how corporations do business with young people. The quintessential 'early adopters' of new technology, children and teens, are eagerly embracing cell phones, iPods, and a host of other new digital tools and quickly assimilating them into their daily lives. The expansion of digital media has created a new marketing ecosystem that encompasses all cell phones, mobile music devices, broadband video, instant messaging, videogames, and virtual three-dimensional worlds."

How to deal with all of this is a problem, the report concedes, but it makes some suggestions. Federal government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should work with Congress to require food and beverage companies to report the full extent of their digital marketing targeted at children and adolescents, including the targeting of specific populations such as Hispanic/Latino and African American. Financial investors in the digital media should develop policies for ensuring that the companies they fund do not engage in deceptive or unfair marketing of food products to children and adolescents. And avenues should be created to help young people understand the new marketing practices being beamed at them and their relationship to health.

"While the growth and expansion of the interactive marketing system will continue unabated, there is still time to create interventions that can help the twenty-first century media culture serve the heath of our children rather than undermine it," the report concludes.

A website with the full report, "Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age," is available at www.digitalads.org/home.php.