Coop and ethical marketing to kids: an Italian example of responsibility

I was in a supermarket, walking down a corridor dedicated to croissants, biscuits and snacks. I was greedily glancing at some snacks  full of chocolate and coconut, intended to leave them on the shelf – it’s swimsuit season, dammit! – while I noticed the following symbol printed on the box:

Coop and ethical marketing to kids: labels

“Moderate consumption for kids”

This thing impressed me positively, since it is a good example of honest and ethical marketing towards kids. It is not profit-oriented at all: some parents, reading it, could avoid buying the product or, at least, drastically reduce their consumption of it. It is an act of responsibility. 

I searched on the Internet some information about this symbol and the philosophy of the company producing these products, Coop. Coop (abbreviation of Consumers’ Cooperative) is a system of Italian consumers’ cooperatives which runs the largest supermarket chain in Italy. Coop was created to buy and resell high-quality goods at fair prices to its members and to consumers in general, striving for biological goods and for food safety. 

More precisely, Coop is committed to offer healthy products to kids, dedicating to them tailored goods and launching informative campaigns in order to support parents’ in their buying decisions and to fight children obesity. Researches show that, in Italy, 22.9% of children between 8-9 years old are overweight and 11.1% are obese. One of the main causes is having wrong eating habits: too many animal proteins, too many sugars and fats, and food with a very limited fiber content, for a total caloric intake that is too high for children. Vegetables are not generally appreciated by kids and parents, instead of educating their children to eat them, they simply get over it. 

Coop and ethical marketing to kids: fighting obesity

For these reasons, Coop launched a project supervised by ECOG (European Childhood Obesity Group) and SIO (Società Italiana dell’Obesità), in order to sensitize families about this problem and to offer their children some healthy product created expressly for them. The campaign is called Club 4-10 (the children ages to which the campaign is mainly dedicated) and it has some goals. First, the increase of information, in order to guide parents in their buying decisions: the symbol presented above is one of the main measures adopted, an immediate and clever way to dissuade parents offering these products to their kids on a daily basis. Then, the creation of a line of products called Club 4-10 Coop addressed to kids between 4 and 10 years old and nutritionally balanced, and of another one called Crescendo Coop (Growing Up Coop), dedicated to children up to three years old, which uses organic ingredients and which avoids salt and sugar, unnecessary in the early stages of children’s life. Finally, Coop has a website entirely dedicated to this topic and campaign: if you are interested in it, just have a look!

Coop and ethical marketing to kids: Club 4-10

I praise this responsible approach to kids and I strongly suggest consumers to reward this kind of behaviour: doing so, in the end this will become the only conduct admitted and “unethical companies” will gradually disappear.

McDonald's VS Italian pizza: an ethical issue

Happy Meal VS pizza: the new McDonald's spot challenges the traditional Italian pizza, with a subtle, insidious message: that McDonald's Happy Meal suits children's needs better than pizza.

As you can see in the spot, an Italian family is sitting in a pizzeria - of course, the place is presented as gloomy and unpleasant; the waiter arrives and asks the kid which kind of pizza he prefers. Determined, he replies: "Happy Meal!" and the spot closes with these words: "Your son has no doubts, Happy Meal", while the family eats happily in a full-of-light McDonald's shop. 
Then, the voice adds: "Always at 4€", leveraging its low price to attract also parents, and not just children. Pizza margherita's price, in fact, is often higher, especially in big cities.

This spot could be the perfect example of unethical food marketing to children, in which an unhealthy diet is presented as the best option for kids. 
Marketers' are really clever: also the appearence of the pizzeria is not casually chosen; they present a dingy, old place, not really attractive to kids. On the contrary, McDonald's shop looks bright and kids-friendly.  
McDonald's may object that Happy Meal has many possible combinations and not all of them are unhealthy. The choices are:

• One main dish, chosen among hamburger, McToast and McNuggets
• A side dish, chosen among French fries and carrots
• A soft drink (Coca Cola, Coca Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite, Peach tea or Lemon tea, still or fizzy water, biological peach juice)
• A dessert (Parmesan cheese, biological yogurt or fruit)

Each combination has a very different calorie count: from 254 kcal (if I choose McNuggets, carrots, water and fruit) to 733 kcal (McToast, fried potatoes, a fizzy drink and Parmesan). But let's face the reality: which kid goes to McDonald's to eat carrots and biological peach juice? 
A pizza margherita grants a calorie count of 800 kcal ca., but its ingredients are far healthier than the "junky" version of the Happy Meal: it is composed of 70% of carbohidrates, 20% of proteins, 10% of fatty acids, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium. Moreover, kids usually do not eat the entire pizza, often they just eat half of it: so, the calorie intake is 400 kcal.
It is definitely healthier than a Happy Meal composed by a McToast, French fries, Coke and Parmesan cheese, so it may be considered as an act of a marketing irresponsibility to create a TV advertisement aimed at children encouraging them to choose Happy Meal instead of pizza. Let's keep in mind that McDonald's food has been proved unhealthy by many documentaries, like the famous Super Size Me, in which the independent filmmaker Mogan Spurlock - from February 2nd to March 1st, 2003 - only ate at McDonald's and brushed against death.

Pizza margherita is candidate to become UNESCO world heritage and a spot which questions its healthy nature is an outrage to this traditional Italian dish. 

Neapolitan people, particularly touched by McDonald's misleading commercial, reacted with this parodic video:

In this ironical video, they offer a Happy Meal to a child, who reacts asking "Daddy, what do I do with this sleaze? I want pizza!". Then the voice says: "Your son has no doubts: pizza a portafoglio. 1, 1.5€ maximum".

Some people may say that eating pizza every day is not good for children's health, too. I totally agree, but if I had to choose between offering pizza or a junky Happy Meal to a kid, as the child in the spot, I would have no doubts.


Carlotta Neuenschwander

Kellogg's: a virtuous marketing conduct

Good morning everybody,

today I am going to talk about a virtuous example of marketing ethicality: Kellogg’s. 

The company has been awarded with the second position – within the sector food and beverages – in the list “2014 World’s Most Ethical Companies”  by Ethisphere.

Indeed, Kellogg’s built its success on an ethical business conduct and on a values-based culture.

The principles on which Kellogg’s behaviour is based are called K-values, and they are the guidelines of the firm’s interaction with its stakeholders.

Kellogg's principles for a virtuous conduct

According to an ethical point of view, Kellogg’s adopts a stakeholder-oriented approach: it takes into consideration not just its shareholders, its customers and its employees, but the communities in which it operates, health organisations and charities and governments, too. 

Kellogg’s goal is to minimize the negative impact on these groups of interests caused by its business conduct, and at the same time to satisfy stakeholders’ various needs. 

Kellogg’s refuses to please its shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders and aims at building positive, two-way relationships with its stakeholders. 

This objective is the cornerstone of its Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, which defines Kellogg’s ambitions – the marketplace, environment, community and workplace ones. 

Talking about marketing, Kellogg’s aims at meeting customers’ needs, selling them high-quality and healthy products, and at adopting an ethical and responsible marketing conduct. 

One practical example: Kellogg’s Breakfast for Better Day campaign underlines the importance of a healthy breakfast, and the products that Kellogg’s offers in this sense guarantee a balanced nutritional content. The focus of its campaign is fighting hunger, donating cereal and snacks for breakfast to children in need.

Kellogg's Breakfast For Better Days

With this practical case, I want to demonstrate that ethicality and success are not separate worlds: sometimes, marketers think that unethical behaviours may increase their profits, but it could be so just in the short-term. On the contrary, an ethical conduct is crucial to build a strong reputation and a competitive advantage. 

Carlotta Neuenschwander

Deceptive marketing: how to fight it.

Hi readers,

Today I want to talk about a concrete project in the field of marketing ethics, run by the University of Pavia: if you are interested, just have a look at Protect Yourself From Deceptive Marketing Practices.

Universitiamo - logo of the campaigns run by the University of Pavia

This project aims at protecting consumers from irresponsible marketing techniques, especially from those targeting children. Kids are often manipulated by marketing campaigns, consequently inducing parents to buy what advertising tells them to. The project is focused on food & beverages field, since it is one of the main areas in which children are targeted, and one of the most dangerous ones, too. In fact, marketing can promote wrong eating habits and products that are detrimental for children’s health: consumers should be educated, in order to bypass the kind of marketing which promotes these products.

The project is based on:

• a detailed analysis of customers’ eating habits and their exposure to marketing practices
• study of virtuous and vicious marketing cases
• in-depth interviews with experts in the field of irresponsible marketing
• focus groups with parents (shoppers) to identify their problems and needs

Of course, this project needs funds to be enacted, and in a period of economic crisis people may think that spending money on such a project would be useless.

That is wrong: learning how to avoid evil marketing is learning how to spend your money in a better way. Keeping away from treacherous marketing campaigns is crucial, because it prevents you from being exploited by irresponsible marketers, who leverage on your children to reach you and make you one of their consumers. At the same time, choosing virtuous companies induce even irresponsible ones to change their strategy and converge on a more ethical marketing.  

Nowadays, customers do have the power: if your shopping habits are ethical, firms will get more and more ethical as well. 

Carlotta Neuenschwander