Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6506

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Lee J.
Ad groups link up to cement junk food victorie
Sydney Morning Herald 2006 Nov 21
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ad-groups-link-up-to-cement-junk-food-victories/2006/11/20/1163871338948.html

Full text:

Ad groups link up to cement junk food victories

Julian Lee Marketing Reporter
November 21, 2006
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ADVERTISERS are claiming victory in the debate about junk food advertising’s contribution to obesity, but expect more areas of marketing to come under attack.

To help them defend the “legitimacy of commercial communications”, media and advertising groups have formed an umbrella organisation, provisionally called the Australian Marketing Communications Alliance, which was announced by the advertisers’ peak body at a cocktail party last night.

The organisation will bring together commercial TV and radio stations, poster companies, the direct mail industry, magazine publishers and the advertisers who each year plough $11 billion into the Australian media.

Speaking at the event in Sydney, the chairman of the Australian Association of National Advertisers, Ian Alwill, said: “What we are suggesting is combining our interests and our resources where and when there’s a common cause like attacks on advertising and marketing communication and [the] underlying threat to free enterprise.”

Earlier Mr Alwill, who is also head of marketing for the Australian arm of the Swiss food group Nestle, said the industry had stood firm on junk food advertising’s contribution to obesity and had “won some ground”.

But he warned advertisers the battle was far from over. “Through our industry connections at home and abroad we know that cases are being prepared against the advertising and marketing practices of a number of specific areas of business far beyond anything we’ve seen to date,” he said in his speech, flagging alcoholic beverages, gambling, telecommunications and cars as future battlegrounds.

The British media regulator Ofcom will ban all junk food advertising during children’s programming and on dedicated children’s channels by next June. But health groups, including the British Medical Association, were disappointed it did not ban all food and drink ads aimed at children before 9pm.

In Australia the introduction of an industry-backed code regulating food and drink advertising was thought to have eliminated the threat of further government intervention. But a shiver ran through the marketing industry last week when the federal Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, blasted soft drink companies for their role in contributing to childhood obesity.

Clare Hughes, food policy officer at Choice, said: “The issue is far from over. Certainly when we surveyed consumers, 82 per cent wanted government regulation of food and drink marketing to children. There’s still community concern and state health ministers continue to show great interest” in regulation.