Back in the days when we were innocent kids, many of us were dragged on what seemed like endless amounts of errands with our parents that would often end with a trip to the supermarket. We would find ourselves swimming in a sea of adult legs, cold fluorescent lights beating down on unforgiving linoleum.
But amidst this foreign adult world, we found comfort and familiarity in the brightly colored boxes that shamelessly paraded our favorite cartoon characters. Our parents could not understand how seeing Scooby or Mickey on a box of cereal could change their sweet, well-behaved child into a greedy, relentless monster. Was this all a ploy from marketers to change “shopping time” into “grounding time?”
A recent study has shown that marketers really understand the child psyche. Researchers at Yale University found that 85% of their child participants, ages four-six, were more likely to choose fruit snacks and graham crackers that had cartoons sprawled across the packaging.
You may be saying: “Ok, I do not see the big deal, anyone that is a parent could have told you this without spending money on doing a formal study.” But what is interesting is that when given the same product in different packaging, 55% of children actually stated that these cartoon packaged items actually tasted better. How can that be? Before you start ranting on the evils of marketing, the participants on average were not significantly influenced by packaging for healthy items such as carrots.
It seems that the effectiveness of the food industry’s $1.6 billion youth-targeted marketing strategy extends only to certain types of foods, particularly those commonly referred to as “junk food.” In an increasingly more market driven country, who should be responsible for the increase in child obesity and health related complications? Should parents teach their children to eat healthier, or should the food industry stop preying on the easily manipulated minds of our country’s youth by enticing them with familiar cartoons on unhealthy products?
