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Spider-Man can make you fat

Posted in General, Advertising, Marketing, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs April 13th, 2007 by Melinda Varley

This week the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) announced new rules that will ban non-broadcast ads of food and soft drinks that are character or celebrity endorsed – could this be the real answer to ending childhood obesity?

It may not be the silver bullet to our kids’ bulging waistlines but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Characters such as Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean and Winnie the Pooh have long been associated with kid’s treats such as sweets, cupcakes, soft drinks and even cheese offering kids an incentive to buy them.

Promotions such as ‘free toy inside’, free tattoos, games and offers have been a common form of promoting films to kids as Bernard Matthews proved this week by using Spider-Man in its ‘brand refresh’ campaign.

But what will the ramifications be on the film industry when you take away the sweets and all the loosely associated food products?

The release of Casino Royale proved last year that product placement and character endorsement can be a very powerful tool with many brands featuring the famous spy in its advertising such as Sony and Aston Martin. When GQ featured Daniel Craig (the blonde Bond) on its front cover, it sold more copies than ever before – and that was for adults, imagine what character placement and endorsement does for kids.

The ISBA said that while advertising can be a part of the solution it was not the cause of obesity. There seems to be two issues in the debate – are we banning character endorsement because we don’t want to associate them with ‘junk’ food or are we banning ads to solve the obesity problem?

It seems ridiculous that there has been so much media attention over an issue that will not really force us to lose weight. The real issue is we should use characters to endorse the healthy stuff kids won’t eat, like Disney has started to do, or to encourage us to get fit via exercise. Once again though, the real problem is that we need to be getting through to parents, after all, they control what they buy for their kids and control their diets.