Food Marketing Practices
Have you seen a best or worst food marketing practice? Send them to the Rudd Center.
Best Food Marketing Practices:
 | Grocery chain rewards kids and schools for purchasing healthy items | January 2012 |
| Stop and Shop and Giant grocery stores are working to educate kids about healthy foods and encouraging them to make healthy choices. Through the A+ School Rewards Program, shoppers earn triple points for their schools on items with the chain’s “healthy ideas” label. The chain also partners with Field Trip Factory to offer nutrition-oriented field trips at the stores that focus on food groups, vitamins and minerals, organic food, and physical activity. The grocer’s website also features a “Passport to Nutrition” section with interactive games and handouts about health and healthy eating. | ||
 | Cuties campaign makes fruit fun | December 2011 |
| Cuties is running a $20 million campaign to highlight their California mandarins, marking the first time the brand has made its citrus fruits available nationwide. The campaign includes television and print ads, in addition to a website CutiesKids.com, where parents can enter their own “cutie” in a video contest for a chance to win a $150,000 scholarship for one lucky child. Each uploaded video also allows the user to donate $10 to a variety of classroom projects through DonorsChoose.org. The ads highlight that the nutritious fruit is “perfect for little hands” and can be fun for kids to peel and eat. | ||
 | “Kung Fu Panda 2” Teams up with Tofu | May 2011 |
| To coincide with the release of the second installment of Kung Fu Panda this month, DreamWorks has partnered with House Foods America Corporation to jointly market the new computer animated film and a variety of tofu products. The main character, Po, will appear on product packaging to promote the high protein meat alternative. In addition to the kid-oriented packaging, print and billboard ads, a newspaper coupon promotion, and a website were recently launched. | ||
Worst Food Marketing Practices:
 | General Mills Basic 4 cereal touts fruit and nut content | February 2012 |
| The tagline for Basic 4 calls the cereal “A delicious blend of sweet and tangy fruits, crunchy almonds, and a wholesome variety of grains.” A quick read of the ingredient list shows that sugar appears twice on the label before raisins, the 5th ingredient and first fruit. There is also more salt that the other fruit in the product (cranberries) which is the 12th ingredient. Though the cereal name implies that it provides components of 4 food groups once milk is added, the cereal contributes only a minimal amount of nuts or fruit and 5 forms of added sugar. | ||
 | Virtual cereal-ity | January 2012 |
| Cereal boxes may soon become “platforms for all kinds of content”. In an interview with USA Today, the Chief Marketing Officer of General Mills discussed how he would like to reinvent food packaging, most notably on cereal boxes, using digital technology. By summer, children may be able to interact with their cereal box by pointing their smart phone to specific places on the box to see “visual surprises”, play games, or engage in other forms of entertainment with the brand. Testing has already been done on a Honey Nut Cheerios box, where consumers were asked to point their camera phone onto the box to see a video of a “world of honey”. This emerging marketing tactic is concerning, considering it is one more way that children will be engaging and interacting with a brand. Content may include ads, advergames, or websites, to name a few. Another problem could be the encouragement of distracted eating, which has been shown to increase consumption. | ||
 | Are natural ingredients enough to make Nutella healthy? | January 2012 |
| Nutella follows a common theme in advertisements, boasting natural ingredients and vitamin E as reasons to serve it with children’s breakfast meals. The website tells consumers that “the unique taste of Nutella® hazelnut spread continues to come from the combination of roasted hazelnuts, skim milk and a hint of cocoa” when in fact the first two ingredients in this product are actually sugar and palm oil. A single serving provides a whopping 21 grams of sugar, which is 140% of the added sugar that a 4-8 year old should have in an entire day. | ||
