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Spending Away on In-School Marketing
By Deborah Lehmann —
Food and Beverage companies spent close to $186 million on in-school marketing to children in 2006, according to a recent report by the Federal Trade Commission. The industry pumped money into cafeteria products, vending machines, school events, buses and athletic uniforms, pouring over 11 percent of their youth marketing dollars into schools.
Ads for sodas, juice and other beverages made up more than 90 percent of in-school marketing, the report found. That means marketing in schools accounted for one-quarter of beverage companies’ youth-directed marketing expenditures.
The report also found that fast food restaurants spent almost $10 million on in-school marketing, and the dairy industry spent about $5 million on marketing to teenage students.
In addition to placing their logos on posters, educational materials and vending machines, some companies companies offered contests, prizes and redeemable tokens. Some examples from the report:
- One beverage company placed winning stickers on bottles in school vending machines, allowing the lucky students to redeem items like fair tickets and sports merchandise from the principal’s office.
- A snack company held a raffle for a mountain bike, iPod shuffles, shirts and sports equipment, promising a party with a live DJ and snack samples to the winner’s school.
- A Fast food restaurant sold cups, pens and magnets to schools to use as student reading awards.
- Another restaurant gave out tokens for restaurant games to students who received good report cards.
Children are exposed to food marketing all over the place, and studies have found that kids can establish brand loyalty before they even start school, when they’re as young as 3 or 4. Keeping in mind that kids already see hundreds of food ads and commercials outside of the classroom, should we accept in-school food marketing as a source of much-needed revenue for school districts? Or should we keep advertising out of our educational institutions? I’d love to hear your comments.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
If these companies didn’t advertise on school campuses and in lunch rooms, wouldn’t they just pour that money into kid-targeted TV ads anyway? Have their been studies showing that this “educational advertising” has a particularly strong effect on juvenile eating habits?
February 18th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
I’d go for the latter (keeping advertising out). I can’t imagine any school truly relies on this funding for important programs, and as a parent, in-school marketing seems particularly insidious. I make a concerted effort not to expose my son to advertising, and many of my friends do the same for their children. But while I can keep him away from the television and out of McDonald’s, there’s nothing I can do to if his teacher is handing out soda cups or putting up posters with a fast-food logo. Young children just don’t have the cognitive ability to recognize advertising for what it is, and thus they can be deeply affected by it. Parents deserve a say in what their kids see — and that means keeping food and beverage advertising out of schools.