Empty pledges on food websites targeting children. A persuasive mark study.

Food manufacturers worldwide have typically adopted self-regulation when it concerns their targeting of children. In the EU, this resulted in the EU pledge that has seen some changes and more strict regulations in recent years. These more recent versions also include websites. The EU pledge members also monitor their compliance and this is a supposedly independent study. The results of that monitoring study are summarized as " a high level of member companies’ compliance with their commitments, as well as a significant change in the balance of food advertising to children in the EU towards options that meet common nutrition criteria" (p. 19). Of course, many of these producers typically have lean websites simply listing their catalogue, without a lot of marketing added.

Sample website from a corporate perspective. Little marketing involved

We also did a study to evaluate existing food websites targeting children. Rather than starting with the food producers, we started from the websites that are advertised to children (on food packages that often refer to campaign websites, online games etc.). In a study focusing on Belgium and the Netherlands, our results were much less rosy.
Marketing features were used on each website. Of all the foods these websites advertised, the vast majority (i.e. 88.5%) were unhealthy. A lot of the websites did actually not directly relate to the pledge members although these members represent a majority of food production. However, and this might be most unexpected, pledge members did not stand out with less marketed websites or websites advertising healthier food.

Sample website from a child's consumer perspective: a marketed advergame

More info on the article (International Journal of Health Promotion and Education) here and a full read here

Happy Birthday, New Coke (°March 23, 1985)

Tuesday April 23rd of 1985 the Coca-Cola Company launched New Coke. This still remains one of the major cases in the marketing literature. It often ranks first in all-time lists of marketing fails (such as on marketwired, or in Matt Haig's book Brand Failures). Apart from the obvious failure (for the short version, see below; for the longer version, see Wikipedia), I think it is also a good demonstration of the intangible part of brand value, which I will explain below.

Facebook's Whatsapp deal might all be about usability

OK, so Facebook bought Whatsapp for an incredible amount of money. Two reasons have been hypothesized as to the why of that deal: money or data.

Money? The figures do not add. With 450 billion of users paying 1 dollar per year, you're having a very long term goal or sky-high ambitions of increasing the user base.
Data? Sure there is a lot of data involved in Whatsapp. But, seriously, 35$ per user for additional data to use and sell to advertisers? That is a lot of money. Facebook already has a lot of data. They could better spend that money on an army of statisticians and save the other 18.9 billion for another deal.

So, what could be a reason? Usability or, in other words, the attractiveness of Facebook as a sub-internet. Due to its own succes, Facebook has become a massive network crowded with information. The expansion of the social medium called Facebook is gradually reaching a point where you can say that is has become an entire subsystem much like how http once was only a part of "the internet" (next to usenet, FTP, e-mail) but than gradually became a pars pro toto. This is all fine if you are looking at the business figures, but it has a serious drawback for the end user. The stream of information is now so immense that Facebook has to ration the timeline (well, they make money out of it as well, of course, with payed distribution of updates) and that many users finds themselves overwhelmed. This decreases the attractivity for users to spend time on Facebook and it partly explains the unfollowing of friends.

Whatsapp is a perfect solution for that. Integrating it in Facebook will install a sublayer that contains only proximal facebook friends. Indeed, your average contact list on Whatsapp will likely be much smaller than the number of Facebook Friends. It is your closer social inner circle.

Now, imagine a mobile Facebook app layout where Whatsapp is a card within the app. It will contain short status updates of your proximal inner circle. You'll be very interested in that part of the app and engaging a lot with it. Around that info will be your more distant Facebook circle, possibly with brand related posts and Facebook ads for monetization. And you can even imagine regular adds around that one as a third circle. Building the platform as such will ensure a continued interest in the use  of Facebook as a whole, due to the interest in proximal circle of contacts. There are two assumptions here. First, Facebook should try to be the best alternative for both the Whatsapp sub-app and for the overall network experience. Second, people should still be willing to buy smartphones the size of a 7" tablet because a card can only be fitted within an app on such a screen size or larger.
If the above is the way Facebook will integrate Whatsapp, than it is actually a very smart move by Facebook to build there own Google+ based on actual consumer uses. Google+ already has the functionality of different circles, it is closely linked with sharing of pictures and videos (cf. the recent Youtube integration) and it has its messaging/calling application with hangouts. The major drawback of Google+ is that Google built a very strong communication/social platform without consumer usage. I think, Facebook is moving to a very similar platform, but are buying the consumer usage and then make it a platform.

Portion cues in food packaging: Implicit seduction

Ever wondered about the adequate portion size of a glass of soda or juice? A bowl of cereals? Or spreads for your sandwich? Maybe you do think about this from time to time, maybe you don't. Chances are, however, that cues around you have implicitly seduced you (they "nudged" you) to have a certain portion size because they set anchors on which you rely to make your own choices. One such cue could be provided by social comparison: you tend to derive information from what others do. For instance, you'll take a bit more than a smaller person or somebody you know to be dieting. These are quite valid cues. But we are also surrounded by biased cues on food packaging. Next time you open the fridge or you're sitting at the breakfast table, you better take a good look and then think about this post.

Children's deep processing of commercial messages

Together with Heidi Vandebosch (Antwerp University) I did a series of studies trying to demonstrate that children (6 years old) are not the mere peripheral processors they are often considered to be. In fact, the processing of persuasive messages by these children could be as profound as adults' processing. This has strong implications with regard to the type of attitude change to be expected. Rather than being superficial and short-term, this insight suggests children are strongly influenced with possibly long-term consequences.

Slideshare presentation

One possible reason why, in the past, many have considered children to be rather superficial in their processing of persuasive messages is that they are targeted with cues adults easily identify as persuasive tools (e.g. cartoon character endorsements, jingles, colorful images). However, these cues do not necessarily differ on a theoretical level from the cues that have effects among adults (such as visual imagery to convey product features, adult celebrity endorsements, humor, etcetera).

To learn more about our studies, please take a look at the slidedeck that was presented at the CTC2012 conference in Milan:

http://www.slideshare.net/timsmitstim/young-childrens-deep-processing-of-endorsement-marketing

Food advertising and pledging not to target children

I wrote a commentary on the topic, following the Belgian Pledge of main food advertisers not to target children under 12 anymore. The commentary appeared on the blog of the KU Leuven Institute for Media Studies [in Dutch]: http://instituteformediastudies.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/kinderreclame-en-ongezonde-voeding-de-belgian-pledge/

Green is for NO! Snickers' nutrition labels

Nutrition information on packaged foods indicating, for instance, caloric content is legally enforced in the United States and also in Europe there are only a few exceptions (I don't know about regulations in other parts of the world, so please leave a comment if you do so). What has been an issue, however, and one that has been debated for a long time, is the exact form these labels should have. What information should be present? In which format should it be presented? Where should the information be? There are still a number of degrees of freedom pertaining to these choices. In the USA, food manufacturers decided themselves to put the labels on the front of the packages. Being in the States at the moment, one of these front-of-pack labels caught my attention. It is the attention-grabbing green label on the Snickers bars. And I have ambivalent thoughts about it...

Example of a US Snickers calories label (originally featured on John B. Mahaffie's Blog)

Where's the revenue in Google Glasses?

The Google Glasses preview seems great. It seems feasible, releases are expected pretty soon and there is some intuitive appeal to the idea (and some intuitive questions as well). If you have not seen the preview, you should.

A number of parodies, of course, already exist and one is remarkably interesting and touches upon important marketing and revenue issues.

How "frictionless" is killing its darlings

One of the next hypes in social media will be frictionless sharing (see, e.g., Polle de Maagt). Whereas traditional sharing is fun and social, but cumbersome or time-consuming, frictionless sharing implies automatic sharing activities. In fact, lots of social network users are already sharing frictionless. For instance, with an automated link between LinkedIn or Facebook and Twitter, or with an automated Spotify sharing on one's Facebook account. Marketers now seem to massively dig into the frictionless idea, presumably because the less cumbersome sharing could increase eWOM (electronic Word-Of-Mouth). Or maybe they are just creating future job opportunities, because frictionless sharing might, in the longer term, kill a lot of the appeal of social networks to marketers.

What you hear about research

Academia is often criticized for being a too slow innovation force, with research being either too fundamental and abstract or specific but outdated by the time it gets published. This is certainly the case in more applied disciplines like marketing communication and advertising research. While I will not contest this observation, I will try to make clear in this blogpost that the slowness of academia should not be replaced by mediocre research from non-academic research agencies. Of course, everybody is free to conduct research but non-academic research is rapidly gaining impact in society and this could be troublesome if it is treated just as if it was a piece of research that went through the complete scientific publication process.

Google+ A new religion has been born

Since today there is of course a big buzz going on about the public accessibility (without invitations) of Google+. Next to that, there's a large number of "new stuff" that is all pretty cool. Still, G+ is mocked because of its ghost-town appearances.

Pure blasphemy, in my opinion. In my view, a new religion has been born.

The reason for thinking so is rather graphic and deals with marketing communications. Google has played it very clever and they sure know their marketing Bible. G+'s immanent succes should not be attributed to the product itself but to how they used their other product, the sky-high favorite search engine named Google. Have a look at it today and you'll see this ...