After recently being selected by the Parent's Jury as the recipient of the Smoke and Mirrors" awards for their Coco Pops commercials Kellogg has decided to change how they market their products to children. Kellogg has made the decision to self-regulate their marketing efforts to children.Their plan starts with no longer advertising their products to children under 12. The only advertising they will be doing for their products will be if their particular product meets the nutritional guidelines set for calories, sugar, fat and sodium. Along with doing away with most of their marketing efforts aimed at children, Kellogg has vowed to no longer use licensed characters to promote their products.
Kellogg's plans to weed out their marketing is set to be put into affect in the next year or so. These changes are being made because of threats of a lawsuit against Kellogg and Viacom. The lawsuit was over the their marketing directed at children. The lawsuit will be dropped if these companies both change their approach to marketing to children.
Along with ending their marketing for certain products that don't fall into the nutritional guidelines, Kellogg plans to reformulate some of their current products so that they do meet the guidelines.
Kellogg's efforts are not the first of their kind. Last fall 10 food and beverage companies announced that they will begin to self-regulate their advertising to children. McDonald's and General Mills, a large competitor of Kellogg, were among the 10 companies. It seems as though it was only a matter of time before Kellogg followed the trend of self-regulation.
These efforts by Kellogg and other large food and beverage companies are affecting other companies views on self-regulation. I feel that if other companies will have to eventually change their ways to conform with industry standards or they to could receive threats of lawsuits due to their advertising to children.
Information for this post provided by Kellogg to Curb Marketing of Foods to Children
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