This issue was mentioned to me by my friend Vishnu a couple of years back. At that time he was working in the area that specifically dealt with this issue. When he mentioned me about this I didn't think it was that serious issue. I used to think that after all most of parents decide what they want to buy for their kids so as long as parents are aware of these things it should not be a big problem, but I was wrong as things are not that simple. There is a nice TED talk on this issue by Anna Lappe. I encourage everyone reading this to listen to this talk, it's really educating. She nicely explains from her personal experience how these big food (or junk food) firms strategically target kids to sell their products and develop brand loyalty. They got their mantra right "Catch them young." Once you develop a passion and likeness for your brand among kids you have a loyal customer who will promote and use your product rest of their lives. Sounds like a great marketing strategy for the 21st century. However, I feel that this great marketing mantra was invented long ago by people who wanted to spread their religion or cult movements, these organizations saw how well this strategy works so they all are using this formula to market their products.
All these big corporates that want to substitute everything on your dining table with products produced by them are pretty successful in their marketing. They have already established their brand value and all these brands have huge fan following and loyal customers. We can see that more and more people eat out and don't like to cook their meals at home and even naturally available and free drink, water, is substituted by a variety of soft drinks or energy drinks and there are so many zero-calorie flavored water products sold in the market. Because of all this heavy marketing in today's world people prefer to pay money to buy water rather than drinking freely available, easy-to-purify tap water. Many terms like zero-calorie soft drinks (like Diet Coke and Pepsi), chemical-free products (I wonder what they mean by this because even pure water is a chemical), or 100% natural, are used as marketing tricks to attract and mislead customers. These terms are used to make people feel that they are consuming very healthy stuff that is good for their health. There is no limit to what extent these advertisements can go to target their customers and they also use popular cartoon characters and very attractive packaging to attract kids to their product. I am not against marketing, companies have the right to promote their product and market it to potential customers in a legal way but if they purposely target customers who are not in a position to evaluate their product and judge their claims (kids and in some cases teenagers) then it's unfair to target such consumers so aggressively. Even many educated adults also fall prey to many marketing gimmicks so just imagine kids who don't even know that they are being targeted as potential customers and have no idea about the quality and effect of the product which they demand. Once they fall into this trap then it's very difficult to come out of it. This becomes a sort of addiction that is done by using legal means so that no one can question this.
Till now there was no public awareness about what can be the result of this targeted marketing on consumers. But now we can see the effect of these things around us. Health issues resulting from poor diet choices and sudden lifestyle changes are putting enormous pressure on the public health system in various countries (obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are some examples). For the first time in human history, there is a possibility that the life expectancy of the next generation might be less than the previous generation. This is because choices they make in their diet and lifestyle. Aggressive advertising has a huge influence on the choices consumers make today. The issue is serious enough that it should get the public attention. It should be discussed at every level as consumers of all ages are getting affected because of this. Public debate is required and some policymaking is also required before it becomes too big of a public health crisis to handle. It's all about our own health and the health of our future generations and if we don't talk about this then I wonder who will.
Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.
[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]
Links:
1. TED talk by Anna Lappe
2. Amount of sugar in some average sized bottles.
3. http://www.sugarstacks.com/
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