November 15, 2006 -- Ad Industry Revises Guidelines for Advertising to Children

Major American advertisers yesterday revised 32-year-old guidelines for advertising directed to children younger than 12 and announced that 10 food and beverage companies have agreed to devote at least half their advertising to promoting more healthful dietary or lifestyle choices to children. J.Michael McGinnis, who chaired an Institute of Medicine committee on marketing to children, called the advertisers’ action “a move in the right direction and a pretty substantial change,” but advocacy groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest pointed out that under the new guidelines companies will continue to be able to market junk food to children and will promote foods identified by the Food and Drug Administration as "healthy," which doesn’t bar the advertising of foods high in sugar, such as sugary breakfast cereals. Among other pledges, the advertisers agreed not to advertise their products in elementary schools; they also agreed to distinguish between advertising and program content on television and to act against companies that engage in marketing practices such as promoting 900 numbers to children. Advertising to children has become a $15 billion a year industry in the past three decades, at the same time that rates of childhood obesity and related ailments have doubled. The 10 companies that have signed up to advertising changes account for two-thirds of television food and beverage ads directed to children; they are Cadbury Schweppes, Campbell Soup, Kraft Foods, Unilever, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Hershey, General Mills, and Kellogg.