Unlike France and Ireland, the Unit

Unlike France and Ireland, the United Kingdom is trying a more carrot-and-stick approach, encouraging self-regulation with legislation as a last but threatened resort. The U.K. government published health recommendations giving the food and beverage industries until early 2007 to act more responsibly or face formal legislation. The document followed a high-profile U.K. government inquiry into child obesity. Marketing and agency executives called to give evidence were grilled publicly over the use of celebrities in ads, inciting kids’ “pester power” and high salt and sugar content in foods.
The paper’s proposals include clamping down on using cartoon characters to appeal to kids in food and beverage ads, potentially dooming brand icons such as Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger. There have also been calls for a ban, like Ireland’s, on celebrity endorsement in “junk-food” advertising. In a country where the biggest grocery- store brand, PepsiCo’s Walker’s Crisps, relies on celebrities in its ad campaigns, that’s a big deal.
The Nordic countries are the most militant about enacting laws to ban or restrict marketing of foods that they consider unhealthy to children and fighting to extend those restrictions to the rest of Europe. The toughest laws against advertising to children have long been in Scandinavia, where the health risks of obesity and diabetes from high sugar consumption are sometimes compared to tobacco. The legislatures in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are all considering even tighter controls on marketing sugary foods. Den¬mark’s National Consumer Council has petitioned the government to ban marketing “unhealthy food products” to anyone under 16 years of age, and Finland’s legislature is hearing from health groups that want a total ban on TV ads for sugar-laden food. Commenting on such proposals, the CEO of the Finnish Food and Drink Industries Federation said, “Implementing stricter controls on advertising food and drinks will not be a quick-fix answer to all these problems.”
“The European Union is on it, Washington is on it, the ball is rolling now and the food companies have to do something,” said one top advertising agency executive. But he added, “I hope food companies won’t be bullied into doing things that play to the politicians,” noting there are other contributing factors for obesity, such as low income. He said food marketers could truly contribute to a solution by putting money into programs like the USDA’s Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a subsidized food and education program that also happens to be very good at driving sales for the products approved for the list. The key is to translate the hype to real solutions like physical education in schools and parents—the most important role models according to substantiated research—reclaiming responsibility. “If a food has a right to exist, a marketer has the right to advertise it.”
Marketers are struggling against a crackdown on food advertising amid growing concern over obesity throughout the world. Marketers are trying to avert a clampdown with greater self-regulation. But despite a slew of individual company efforts to shift new-product and marketing focus to healthier offerings, the industry has, until now, largely shied away from defending itself more broadly.