Marketing has a profound affect on the foods we eat and the beverages we drink, yet most of that marketing is for products we should avoid. BMSG monitors the media to help keep advocates informed of the tactics food and beverage companies use to target children, communities of color, and other groups that are particularly susceptible to the health harms these products cause. Below are archives of our monitoring.
Source: QSR Magazine on April 02, 2012
Burger King is significantly expanding its menu to include more salads, snack wraps, smoothies and other items. The chain is using celebrity promotions, featuring stars like Mary J Blige and David Beckham, to launch the menu expansion.Source: Forbes on April 02, 2012
Marketers continue to collect research to help them effectively target Latinos for the sale of different products. In this article, Glenn Llopis of the Center for Hispanic Leadership, urges marketers to "get to know Hispanics and their cultural nuances" and "position [the] brand as an advocate of their community". Like many marketers, he sees Latinos as "incredibly valuable" consumers.Source: The Sydney Morning Herald on March 31, 2012
McDonald's funds a documentary that counters claims about the quality of its foods, while at the same time using the film as advertising on Australian TV.Source: Advertising Age on March 30, 2012
Piggybacking on the 25th anniversary of the "Bad" album, the limited-edition package consists of a 16-oz can and features Michael Jackson dancing.Source: Advertising Age on March 30, 2012
Heineken will run the same ads that it has in Mexico for U.S. English and Spanish language TV. Advertising Age reports that the Tecate brand is "trying to expand from its traditional base of new U.S. immigrants to more-assimilated [Latinos]."Source: The Wall Street Journal on March 29, 2012
Marketers report that people associate oatmeal with "energy and healthy choices." In an attempt to capitalize on this perception, the Quaker Oats man is "getting a haircut, losing some weight and dropping about five years from his age."Source: The New York Times on March 28, 2012
NYT blogger KJ Dell'Antonia expands on Mark Bittman's piece and concludes: "If we could find the political will to stop actually pushing foods on our children that we don't want them to eat, that would be a start."Source: The Blog of Bruce Bradley on March 28, 2012
Former food marketing executive, Bruce Bradley, exposes how companies invent birthdays of food products, like Oreo's recent 100th birthday, as a marketing strategy to maximize profits.Source: AdWeek on March 27, 2012
Adweek's Katy Bachman uses McDonald's recent launch of "healthier" Happy Meals as one example of how companies use "self-regulation" as a strategy to avoid federal regulation of junk food marketing to children.Source: L.A. Streetsblog on March 27, 2012
L.A. Streetsblog editor Joel Epstein argues: "it's not the lack of food that's the problem, it's the lack of healthy food compared to an over-abundance of unhealthy food."
