|
|
|
Sometimes this is to add a bit of glamour to a marketing campaign. Or maybe the company hires an expert in spin. Find out more by clicking on the links. Hire a cartoon star to promote the product Hire the specialists who sell character licences Hire Public Relations (PR) staff Create spin and pay for advertorial Activity sheets on food marketing Hire a cartoon character to promote the product...
The picture shows
just a few of the cartoon characters who have been used to promote food
in recent years. The characters are owned by media companies, who charge
a fee for the characters to appear on products. They sell licenses for
companies to use the characters, so this form of marketing is called 'character
licensing'.
Hire the specialists who sell character licences
Here are some of the things that character licensing companies do at the trade shows:
Do elves eat margarine? Do wizards drink fizzy pop? Do dwarves eat crisps? Do black riders put brown sauce on their chips? Do hobbits chomp on jelly sweets? Of course not! So why do characters from the film Lord of the Rings appear on packets of margarine, crisps, fizzy pop, brown sauce and jelly sweets? The answer is that the film
company who made Lord of the Rings makes millions of pounds from
selling the characters to appear on products. Adding a bit of film-star
glamour and excitement makes products seem more attractive.
Hire some public relations (PR) staff 'Everyone knows fruit is good for you' says this leaflet. They're right. But who wrote this leaflet? Why are they reminding you of something you already know? Are they selling oranges? Put your mouse over the leaflet to find out.
This leaflet was written for a tea company trying to convince you that drinking tea is almost as healthy as eating an orange. Are they right? What PR staff don't tell you is that the same tea company got into trouble for making similar claims - they put up posters in 2001 that said 'Go on, live a lot', and seemed to be saying that if you drink tea then you will live longer. The tea company was told to take the posters down.
Create spin
Food companies want people to think positive thoughts about their products. They hire staff to talk to journalists, provide them with lots of information, and to write stories for magazines - all with a positive 'spin'. These are real media cuttings promoting
the health benefits of beer, chocolate, wine and tea. At least two of
them were written by organisations paid to promote the products. What
about the others? It's hard to tell. Spin is deliberately disguised as
if it is real journalism.
One way companies get round this is to disguise advertising as 'advertorial'. This is a mixture of an article and an advert, either paid for or written by the company. Advertorial isn't independent. It is written to persuade you to buy a product. The colour photo shows a magazine called Family Healthcare, published in 2004. One article, called 'Smiles to be Proud Of' claimed that eating sugar isn't much of a threat to teeth. Is it independent? Who wrote the article? Hold your mouse over the picture to find out. If a magazine article tells you how good a product is and doesn't compare the product to other brands, beware! It's probably an advert in disguise, or some other kind of marketing.
The marketer's job is to get you to buy more stuff - whether it's junk food, trainers, or the latest music download. They'll use every trick they can find to encourage you to think their product is cool and that you should part with your cash. Stuff like trainers and music are OK - the only problem is that they may be expensive. But when it comes to marketing of food, most of that marketing is for unhealthy products, which affect your health. Making unhealthy products with cheap ingredients such as water, sugar, fat, salt and additives means that companies have extra money to spare to spend on marketing. Because companies who produce healthier food spend more on quality ingredients, they just don't have the spare cash to do the same sort of marketing, to balance things out.
Click here to download activity sheets on the subject of food marketing.
|
If a company gets stuck with their marketing, they
call in a professional. 
Lots of foods look very similar. So
if a food company wants to attract attention to their own products, they
have to find ways to make the packaging more eye-catching. They can make
the label very colourful, or use tempting descriptions. They can put a
competition or a game on the packaging, or they can give away a free toy
with the food. To attract children, many companies put famous cartoon
characters onto the packaging.
Every year, marketing people get together
at trade shows to sell characters to appear on products such as toys,
t-shirts and food. This is a picture of one of the shows. It's called
a '
Use film star attraction
A
lot of people don't trust what they read in adverts - they've learned
that claims can be exaggerated. They would rather read an article where
a journalist gives an independent judgement of the product.
