Food Company Websites Feature Advergames, Viral Marketing, TV Ads, and
Incentives for Product Purchases
WASHINGTON, July 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Concerned about the high rates of
childhood obesity in the U.S., policymakers in Congress, the Federal Trade
Commission, and agencies such as the Institute of Medicine have explored a
variety of potential contributing factors, including the marketing and
advertising of food products to children. One area where policymakers have
expressed interest, but have also noted a lack of publicly available data,
is in the realm of online food marketing to children. In order to help fill
this gap, the Kaiser Family Foundation today released the first
comprehensive analysis of the nature and scope of online food advertising
to children, to help inform the decision making process for policymakers,
advocates, and industry.
The report, It's Child's Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of
Food to Children, found that more than eight out of ten (85%) of the top
food brands that target children through TV advertising also use branded
websites to market to children online. Unlike traditional TV advertising,
these corporate-sponsored websites offer extensive opportunities for
visitors to spend an unlimited amount of time interacting with specific
food brands in more personal and detailed ways. For instance, the study
documents the broad use of "advergames" (online games in which a company's
product or brand characters are featured, found on 73% of the websites) and
viral marketing (encouraging children to contact their peers about a
specific product or brand, found on 64% of sites). In addition, a variety
of other advertising and marketing tactics are employed on these sites,
including sweepstakes and promotions (65%), memberships (25%), on-demand
access to TV ads (53%), and incentives for product purchase (38%).
"Online advertising's reach isn't as broad as that of television, but
it's much deeper," said Vicky Rideout, vice president and director of
Kaiser's Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health, who
oversaw the research. "Without good information about what this new world
of advertising really looks like, there can't be effective oversight or
policymaking, whether by the industry or by government," she noted. The
advertising industry has announced that it is developing more detailed
voluntary guidelines for online marketing to children, expected to be
released shortly.
The study included detailed analysis of 77 websites, including more
than 4,000 unique web pages. Based on data from Nielsen NetRatings, these
sites received more than 12.2 million visits from children ages 2-11 in the
2nd quarter of 2005.
About three-quarters (73%) of the websites in the study included
advergames, ranging from one to more than 60 games per site. In total, the
sites in the study contained 546 games featuring one or more food brands,
such as the Chips Ahoy Soccer Shootout, Chuck E. Cheese's Tic Tac Toe, the
M&M's Trivia Game, and the Pop-Tart Slalom. For example, on Kellogg's
FunKtown children can "race against time while collecting delicious
Kellogg's cereal," and at the Lucky Charms site they can play Lucky's Magic
Adventure and "learn the powers of all eight charms" found in Lucky Charms
cereal. To encourage additional time spent at the website, many of the
games promote repeat playing (71%), offer multiple levels of play (45%), or
suggest other games the visitor might enjoy (22%).
Almost two-thirds (64%) of sites in the study use viral marketing, in
which children are encouraged to send emails to their friends about a
product, or invite them to visit the company's website. For example, at
juicyfruit.com users were encouraged to "Send a friend this fruitylicious
site!" and told that if they "send this site to 5 friends" they would get a
code that could then be used to access additional features on the site.
Other sites encourage young users to invite friends to help them
"redecorate" their online "rooms," challenge them to play an advergame on
the site, or send them an "e-card" featuring the company's brand or
spokescharacters. For example, on Keebler's Hollow Tree website, children
are invited to send a friend some "Elfin Magic" in a birthday or seasonal
greeting.
The report was released today at a forum in Washington, D.C. that
featured food industry leaders, government health officials, and consumer
advocates. The study was conducted for Kaiser by Elizabeth Moore, associate
professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame. A webcast of the
session can be found at http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia071906pkg.cfm .
The following are additional key findings from the survey:
Television Advertising Online
* Half (53%) of all sites in the study have television commercials
available for viewing. On Kellogg's FunKtown site, children can earn stamps
by viewing commercials in the "theater." On the Lucky Charms and Froot
Loops sites, serialized "webisodes" unveil animated stories featuring brand
characters and products. On Skittles.com, users are told they can watch the
ads "over and over right now" instead of having to wait for them to appear
on TV.
Nutrition Information
* Half of sites (51%) included nutritional information such as that
found on a product label, and 44% included some type of nutritional claim,
such as "good source of vitamins and minerals."
* Twenty-seven percent of all sites have information about eating a
healthy diet, such as the number of servings of fruits and vegetables that
should be eaten daily. For example, the Kellogg's site nutritioncamp.com
included such features as "nuts about nutrition" and "decipher the secrets
of the Food Pyramid."
Incentive for Product Purchases
* Almost four in ten sites (38%) have incentives for the user to
purchase food so they can collect brand points or stamps that they can then
exchange for premiums (such as gaining access to new games or purchasing
brand-related clothing). For example, children are encouraged to purchase
specially-marked packages of Bubble Tape gum and then enter the codes
online to get free Nintendo game tips.
Memberships, Registration, and Marketing Research
* One in four (25%) sites offer a "membership" opportunity for children
age 12 or younger. Children who sign up on websites may be proactively
informed about new brands, exclusive offers, and new television commercials
available for viewing. Thirteen percent require parental permission, while
12% do not.
* Thirteen percent of sites include polls or quizzes, some of which
were used to ask visitors their opinions on products or brand-related
items. For example, on cuatmcdonalds.com, visitors are asked to vote for
"the dollar menu item you crave the most" and for "your favorite McDonald's
IM icon character."
Extending the Online Experience Offline
* Three out of four (76%) websites studied offered at least one "extra"
brand-related option for children, such as screensavers or wallpaper for a
child's computer, printable coloring pages, branded CD covers, or brand
logos or characters that can "live" on the child's computer desktop.
Educational Information
* Thirty-five percent of sites offer some type of educational content,
ranging from historical facts about dinosaurs to astronomy, sports or
geography.
* A third (33%) of sites include what the study has dubbed
"advercation," a combination of advertising and education, such as using a
brand character to present educational topics, or covering topics such as
the history of how chocolate is made on hersheys.com.
Website Protections For Children
* Almost all (97%) of the sites in the study provided some information
explicitly labeled for parents, such as what type of information is to be
collected from children on the site (93%), legal disclaimers (88%), a
"contact us" link (87%), statements about the use of "cookies" (81%), and
statements of compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act
(COPPA) (74%), or adherence to Children's Advertising Review Unit's (CARU)
guidelines (46%).
* On all websites where personal data was requested (beyond a first
name, screen name or email address for one-time use), mechanisms were in
place to ensure that children age 12 and under did not submit any
information without parental permission.
* Although CARU's guidelines state that "advertising content should be
clearly identified as such" on product-driven websites, only 18% of the
websites studied included any kind of "ad break" or other notice to
children that the content on the site included advertising.
Sweepstakes & Promotions
* Two-thirds (65%) of all brands in the study have promotions in which
children may participate in some way. They include sweepstakes (such as the
chance to win a Nintendo Game Cube system on bubbletape.com or a trip to
Nickelodeon studios on pfgoldfish.com), or the chance to get free
merchandise related to the food product.
Methods
The study was designed by staff of the Kaiser Family Foundation in
collaboration with Elizabeth Moore, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing
at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Moore and her colleagues
collected and analyzed the data, and she authored the report to the
Foundation on the findings. All websites were accessed and content was
coded during the period from June through November 2005.
Using data from Competitive Media Reports, researchers identified the
top food brands advertised to children on TV, and then searched for
corporate or brand websites for those food products. Any child-oriented
brand that was in the top 80% of television advertising spending in its
product category was included in the study. A total of 96 brands were
identified through this process.
Websites for these brands were included in the study if they had
content for children age 12 and under. In most cases, these were sites
whose primary audience was children; in some cases, the primary audience
appeared to be either teens or all ages, with content or separate sections
likely to appeal to children. Only websites sponsored by a food
manufacturer and dealing with the branded products identified through the
process described above were included; food ads on sites such as nick.com
or neopets.com were not included.
A total of 77 unique websites were identified through this process.
Every page of these websites was reviewed and coded by two trained coders
(more than 4,000 unique web pages in total), and more than 400 advergames
were played. Screenshots were captured for all pages on each website.
The Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating
foundation dedicated to providing information and analysis on health care
issues to policymakers, the media, the health care community and the
general public. The Foundation is not associated with Kaiser Permanente or
Kaiser Industries.
SOURCE Kaiser Family Foundation
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Related links:
http://www.kff.org/
CONTACT:
Rob Graham, +1-650-854-9400, or (day of the
event +1-202-347-5270), or rgraham@kff.org, or Sarah Williams
Kingsley, +1-650-854-9400, or sarahw@kff.org, both of Kaiser
Family Foundation
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