Protecting Children from Exploitive Advertising

[Gary Ruskin <gary@essential.org>]

Commercial Alert				September 21, 1999

 -- Ralph Nader and Commercial Alert sent a letter today to key Members
of Congress urging them to restore the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC)
authority to protect children from exploitive advertising.

-- Please contact your Members of Congress to encourage them to
introduce and support legislation to authorize the FTC to protect
children from harmful advertisements.

The letter follows:
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September 21, 1999

The Honorable Dennis Hastert, Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
The Capitol, Room H-232
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Trent Lott, Majority Leader
United States Senate
The Capitol, Room S-230
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable John McCain, Chairman
The Honorable Ernest Hollings, Ranking Member
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
United States Senate
508 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Thomas Bliley, Chairman
The Honorable John Dingell, Ranking Member
Committee on Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
		
	RE: 	Protecting Children from Exploitive Advertising

Dear Speaker Hastert, Majority Leader Lott, Chairmen McCain and Bliley,
and Ranking Members Hollings and Dingell:

	In 1980, the U.S. Congress passed a law to protect adults who prey on
children.

	You read that correctly.  Public Law 96-252 prohibits the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) from enacting rules that would protect the nation's
children from advertising that exploits their vulnerable and trusting
natures.(1)  This law is corporate abuse incarnate.  It should be the
role of Congress to protect children, not those who would prey upon
them.  We urge you to repeal it.

	Back then, the FTC was trying to respond to an increase in aggressive
marketing aimed at children.  Now, two decades later, that increase has
become a deluge.  Kids are literally assaulted from morning to night. 
The ad industry targets them in their home, in the school, and virtually
all points in between. According to Professor James U. McNeal, an expert
on marketing to children, "Virtually every consumer-goods industry, from
airlines to zinnia-seed sellers, targets kids."   It has become nearly
impossible for parents to control the influences that come to bear upon
their children.

	Some advertisers exploit children's weaknesses in order to get them to
want products. For example, Nancy Shalek, president of the Shalek
Agency, told the Los Angeles Times that "Advertising at its best is
making people feel that without their product, you're a loser.  Kids are
very sensitive to that.  If you tell them to buy something, they are
resistant.  But if you tell them that they'll be a dork if they don't,
you've got their attention.  You open up emotional vulnerabilities and
it's very easy to do with kids because they're the most emotionally
vulnerable."

	Others advertisers want to force children to watch ads.  Take, for
example, Channel One, a marketing company that coerces about eight
million children to watch two minutes of ads in school each day.  "The
biggest selling point to advertisers," says Joel Babbit, former
president of Channel One, lies in "forcing kids to watch two minutes of
commercials."  School is a perfect setting for advertisers, Babbit
argues.  "[T]he advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the
bathroom, who cannot change the station, who can not listen to their
mother yell in the background, who cannot be playing Nintendo, who
cannot have their headsets on."

	Some advertisers explicitly admit that they want to control children's
minds.  For example,  Julie Halpin, CEO of Gepetto Group, which
specializes in marketing to kids, explains that "Kids marketing in
general is becoming more sophisticated" in competing for what she calls
"share of mind."  Mike Searles, former president of Kids-R-Us, a major
children's clothing store, said that "[I]f you own this child at an
early age, you can own this child for years to come.  Companies are
saying, ‘Hey, I want to own the kid younger and younger.'"

	Marketers believe they are succeeding.  "Advertising targeted at
elementary school children," Professor McNeal says, "on programs just
for them works very effectively in the sense of implanting brand names
in their minds and creating desires for the products."  

	The problem is that children appear to be developing health problems
because they do precisely what the ads tell them.  For example:

Alcohol.  Alcohol is a major cause of death among teenagers.  It
contributes significantly to motor vehicle crashes, other injuries,
suicide, date rape, and family, school and other problems.  It makes no
sense to encourage children to drink beer or hard liquor.  Nevertheless,
the FTC recently found that the alcohol industry often advertises to
audiences with large numbers of children.  According to their report to
Congress, "alcohol product placement has occurred in "‘PG' and 'PG-13'
films with significant appeal to teens and children (including films
with animal and ‘coming-of-age' themes); in films for which the
advertiser knew that the primary target market included a sizeable
underage market; and on eight of the 15 TV shows most popular with
teens."(2)

	Anheuser-Busch Co., the world's largest brewer, uses child-enticing
cartoon images of frogs, dogs, penguins and lizards in ads for Budweiser
beer.  These Budweiser cartoon characters are hugely popular with
children.  Last year, a KidCom marketing study found these Budweiser
cartoon character ads are the American children's favorite ads.(3)
	
	In June, 1996, Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons Co. broke a 48 year old
voluntary ban on advertising hard liquor on television.  Five months
later, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS)
re-wrote its Code of Good Practice to allow its member distillers to
advertise on radio and television.  Even if such TV ads are aired only
after 9 or 10 PM, they may still reach millions of American children.

Tobacco.  The deadly effects of tobacco advertising on American children
are well-documented by the FTC and the Journal of the American Medical
Association.  RJR Nabisco's Joe Camel ads, then recognizable over Mickey
Mouse by six year olds, helped seduce hundreds of thousands of children
into a lifetime of smoking.  Each day, another 3,000 children start to
smoke; about a third of them will have their lives cut short due to
smoking-related illnesses.  Almost two-thirds of 12th graders who smoke
choose Marlboro.  That is no accident. The Marlboro Man plays to the
desires of young people for independence.

Violent entertainment.  Following the school shootings in Jonesboro,
Pearl, Springfield, Paducah, and Littleton, some media experts,
psychologists, and elected officials have suggested that violent
entertainment -- including violent video games, movies and television --
may be contributing to this violence.  For example, Lt. Col Dave
Grossman, co-author of the new book Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill,
argues that first-person shooter video games -- such as Duke Nukem, Time
Crisis, and Quake  -- "teach children the motor skills to kill, like
military training devices do. And then they turn around and teach them
to like it -- like the military would never do."

Junk food and fast food. Children are subjected to a barrage of clever
parent-bypassing ads for Whoppers, Happy Meals, Coke, Pepsi, Snickers
bars, M&M's, and other junk foods and fast foods.  Children are urged to
buy these products directly themselves.  These ads may contribute to
skyrocketing levels of childhood obesity.  About 25 to 30 percent of
American children are now clinically obese.  Severe obesity among young
children has almost doubled since the 1960's.  Similarly, childhood
diabetes is also on the rise.
These are only the most obvious examples of how corporate advertising
may harm children. Enclosed is a copy of our book Children First: A
Parent's Guide to Fighting Corporate Predators, which documents other
examples.  

Other countries protect children from advertising.  For example, Greece
bans television advertising of toys to children between 7:00 a.m. and
10:00 p.m.  Sweden and Norway ban all advertising directed at children
under the age of 12.  When Sweden takes up the presidency of the
European Union in 2001, it is expected to try to expand these
protections throughout the EU.
	
As a minimum response, you should now take the initiative to restore the
full authority of the FTC to initiate broad-based rule-making on
marketing to children to cure these fundamentally "unfair and deceptive
practices."  Furthermore, Congress should now affirmatively direct the
FTC to undertake such rule-making, and authorize, and appropriate
sufficient funding to enable the FTC to undertake such rule-making with
dispatch, to protect children from this part of the advertising industry
and its commercial molestations.

Sincerely,


Ralph Nader

Gary Ruskin							
Director
		


cc: 	House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt
	Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
	Representative Henry Waxman
	Representative Edward Markey
	Senator Joseph Lieberman
			

NOTES

 (1) 15 U.S.C § 57(h) requires that: "The Commission shall not have any
authority to promulgate any rule in the children's advertising
proceeding pending on May 28, 1980, or in any substantially similar
proceeding on the basis of a determination by the Commission that such
advertising constitutes an unfair act or practice in or affecting
commerce."		

(2) "Self-Regulation in the Alcohol Industry: A Review of Industry
Efforts to Avoid Promoting Alcohol to Underage Consumers." Federal Trade
Commission, September 9, 1999.

(3) "National Study Reveals Kids Favorite TV Ads; Children Display
Sophisticated Tastes, High Expectations for Commercials."  PR Newswire,
March 24, 1998.

<---------------------letter ends here--------------------->
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:
Please call, e-mail, write or fax your Members of Congress to encourage
them to introduce and support legislation to restore the Federal Trade
Commission's authority to protect children against exploitive
advertising.  The congressional switchboard phone number is (202)
224-3121. To find out who your Members of Congress are, as well as their
phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses, see
<http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html>.

Commercial Alert was founded last year to help families protect
themselves against the excesses of advertising, marketing and
commercialism.  Commercial Alert's web address is
<http://www.essential.org/alert/>.

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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
-- 
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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