Branding: It sure starts young.
Source: Rudd Centre for Obesity and Food Policy
I found this and thought it was worth reposting. It’s not about kids getting fatter. It’s about the health and wellbeing of our children, and the lengths industry goes to to get you to identify with a brand from a really young age.
Problematic? Or just harmless fun?
Themocracy
Good god. Surely that can’t be for real?!
Stunts like this unfortunately appeal to a portion of our society, will refrain from making global statements about lack of brains. A big reason why I left advertising industrym way too immoral!
Guh. Makes me think about the total juxtaposition of feeding a bubba expressed breast milk from one of these.
I don’t really see a problem with these unless you are using them to feed soda to a baby. It’s just something different, a design. If you buy a baby bottle with some sort of character on it (things like Disney or other well knowns), isn’t that the same? They are a brand that you are promoting by buying their products.
I think this is very problematic. Brand awareness from an early age = kids drinking more soft drink = kids teeth rotting. From an early age I drank soft drink (pre-school) regularly and I ended up with fillings in all of my teeth. The image of these bottles reminds me of this image:
http://fotozup.com/disturbing-ads-from-the-good-old-times/weird-creepy-ads-190/
(caution: a stupid IMVU ad opens up at this site, just close and you will see the advertisement)
Hi Melinda,
Did you know the Soda ad is a parody? Pretty good huh!!! I thought it was a real advertisement for ages until someone pointed it out to me yesterday!
S
Oh seriously? Well now I feel a bit dumb! lol Thanks for letting me know.
I agree with Sefi that there isn’t much difference between this and Disney branded stuff, and I think they’re both pretty awful. This “ejaculation to cremation” marketing philosophy gets right up my nose. Except when I happen to like the brand. Then I’m a sucker. I’m a total marketing hypocrite and rather wish I had more integrity on the subject.
I think it is problematic to place blame for our poor health choices on brand awareness. There has to be a level of personal accountability.
I dunno Christopher. What if this was advertising from the tobacco industry? Would we think the same?
As far as I can tell these bottles were a product that was available during the 90′s. They aren’t advertising any more than any other product with a logo on it.
Advertising doesn’t force people to do anything, it can influence choices but in the end what you do is up to you. It can’t make you buy Pepsi or smoke if you don’t want to. I know some people are more easily influenced than others, but still…
Soda – A beverage, it doesn’t kill people.
Tobacco – Smoking gave my grandfather cancer, he died in March.
I don’t think kids would develop brand loyalty for a soda based on what bottle they had as a baby. They probably wouldn’t even remember it unless the parents kept the bottle as a keepsake. The more likely thing is that parents that would buy these probably already buy that brand, so that’s the one the kid would grow up around.
The thing about drinking more soda? Parents need to teach their kids that soda is a treat, similar to candy, and that you don’t drink it every time you are thirsty. Kids should also be taught to take proper care of their teeth, eating and drinking anything will cause their teeth to rot if they don’t brush and floss.
Hi Sefi,
I think it is Tania Andrusiak who points out in her book ‘adproofing your kids’ that when companies realised babies stare down and look at a certain point on their chests, they thought it would be a good idea to place their logo in exactly that spot on a bib. Perhaps Dr Thomas knows more about this but there is a psychological aspect to brand awareness.
The aim of brand awareness as i understand it, is to create loyalty. That is what gets people to a point where they might say “oh yes, sony is a good quality brand.’ but can’t describe how and why sony is a better brand than others.
Regarding the brand on the bottle, this is not something that a person would necessarily be conscious of – but associating the brand, with a source of comfort (such as being fed off to sleep with the bottle of milk) is a deliberate act by these companies.
But isn’t most brand loyalty based off products people use? Food and drink brands gain loyalty by having a good tasting product, no matter how good the ads you won’t buy something that isn’t good. Ads can get you to try it, but they can’t make you like it. With electronics you would usually do research and read user reviews, you wouldn’t pick it based on advertising even if the brands you look into might be influenced by it.
Hi Sefi,
Absolutely you have to have a decent product. But with softdrinks as an example, there are a number of good tasting generic brands, yet people will still choose branded soft drinks over generic brands and I’m not sure it’s because they’re genuinely better tasting.
I’m not sure what the argument/research is as I’ve not read the book, i’ve only seen presentations by Maggie Hamilton and Tania Andrusiak where they talk about these things, it’s pretty shocking. The bottom line of the argument though is that we underestimate how advertising influences our decisions.
The thing is, baby bottles aren’t just advertising to the baby/toddler. Other siblings, other children, other adults around the baby see the branding as well. Same with any time you put clothing with prominently displayed brands on yourself: it’s not just you who’s seeing the logo, it’s everyone around you. Do we really need brand names on all products, especially those as ubiquitous as baby bottles?
This is really disturbing to me. It’s clearly meant to be some kind of joke – a bit like those t-shirts for kids that have references to alcohol. The humorous side of giving a young baby pepsi is the incentive here for parents to engage in product placement, I guess. Except, it’s not funny, because some babies are given sugary drinks and because companies like this do have a lot of marketing clout. A friend of mine is a pediatric dental surgeon – he has stories that make my toes curl, about the results of sugary drinks given in bottles. Hence, I don’t think the product-placement in-joke behind these bottles is funny. I actually think it’s kind of sick.
And I think any argument that all marketing is okay because ultimately it’s about personal choice is completely disingenuous. Yeah, I personally choose to consume soft drinks but I’m an adult, I can make that choice. If I thought it was funny or acceptable to give them to my kid in a bottle because marketing suggested it was, that wouldn’t be my kid’s choice. But she’d suffer for it. (And asserting that has nothing to do with fears about childhood obesity booga booga – there are plenty of other reasons why large amounts of sugary drinks shouldn’t be given in bottles). When it comes to marketing to children (or pester-power marketing targeting kids and their parents) I do think we need to have some controls. As someone said above, these bottles haven’t really caught on and I somehow doubt they’d get far these days. Better for companies to go the other way, and put kid-attracting branding on products, rather than the other way around.
By year one I had fillings in every one of my molars because I was allowed to have so much soft drink.
I think the idea of choice also hopes that parents would have the common sense to know that babies don’t need soda.
Sorry for posting again. I’m too lazy to start my own blog though, I would never write in it.
I was thinking… there’s a lot of talk about advertising and media influence (such as thin models, actresses, and magazines causing poor body image in girls). Even though I live on the same planet as everyone else and have been exposed to these sorts of things just as much as anyone else, how is it that they haven’t had any effect on me? That’s why it seems that you’re putting too much power into them. I look at advertising as a way of letting you know what options there are and when new products are released and merchandising is a way of supporting a company that you like. (Though I think these bottles are really stupid, and even disturbing after I found out some people actually give soda to babies.)
I don’t get it.
Hey Sefi – dont apologise – your original comment is the thing that has made the discussion on this blog so interesting! I found this about the Pepsi Challenge which I think is interesting. Basically they conclude that it is the label not the taste that stimulated preference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge
I thought it was really interesting!!
Samantha
If you’ve been taught to critically assess what you’re told (which you clearly have), a lot of advertising has less impact than it might otherwise have. Unfortunately, lots of people aren’t taught this sort of critical analysis.
Also, even for the most ardent advertising analysts, like liquid into this chalk, it still gets in. At least a bit of it. One way it pops up is when you’re buying a product that you don’t care all that much about in terms of brands. You go look at washing powder, or surface cleaner or some such and if the prices are similar, you pick a brand at random. Very often, that brand choice is not nearly as random as you think, and has been subconsciously influenced by advertising. As you say, the product has to be good, but which one do you try first? If it is good enough, do you bother to go and try every other one?
All of these little influences add up – they must or advertising people would have no product to sell, themselves.
Ugh, regardless of the fat/weight subject around small children… what about their teeth?
When I was in the US I was sitting in a bus station overnight with a couple of hundred people and I noticed that some people in the waiting line beside mine were putting Mountain Dew in the baby’s bottle and feeding it to her. She’d have been about 10 months old. American MD is heavily caffeinated!