Should We Restrict Marketing to Children?
Kelli Zimmerman-Klemp
November 25, 2013
Ethics and Decisions

Should We Restrict Marketing to Children? This issue of whether or not advertising aimed at children should be restricted is a strange one to me. When presented with the issue, my first thought was, “Assuming, of course, that the advertising is truthful (which, if it’s not, is a problem unrelated to whom its target audience is), why would we need to restrict advertising to children?” Thinking about it a bit, I was unable to think of a reason why it would be wrong to market to kids. Picking up Taking Sides Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society (Newton, Englehardt, & Pritchard), I was eager to learn why such advertising might be harmful, and thus, unethical, for children. In reading the introduction to the debate, I was reminded that “children do not have the fully developed cognitive skills necessary for making…an informed decision” (Newton et al., p. 256). I had a feeling this last sentence would play a role in the argument against marketing to children.
Stop the Presses I began with Stephanie Clifford’s 2010 article from The New York Times, “A Fine Line When Ads and Children Mix” (Newton et al., p.258). Clifford specifically addresses advertising in magazines aimed at children. The Children’s Advertising Review Unit, an arm of the Council of Better Business Bureaus set up by the National Advertising Review Counsel (asrcreviews.org), has been set up to review child-centric advertising and bring its concerns to each publisher and advertiser. Clifford notes that the attention given to such marketing has forced publishers to limit traditional advertising in magazines and use less direct means of advertising, such as, “running games, contests and events where the advertiser has only a subtle presence” (Newton et al., p.258). Many publications were forced out of the marketplace when their ability to advertise the way they once did was obstructed.
Extra Ketchup, Hold the Beanie Baby
The article representing the other side of the debate was “A Happy Meal Ban is Nothing to Smile About” by Patrick Basham and John Luik, both senior fellows at the Democracy Institute. Their article, published by the Cato Institute, tells the story of how the San Francisco Board of Supervisors attempted to ban the inclusion of small toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals in 2011. One by one, Basham and Luik pick apart the four arguments used to support the ban, referring to them as “false assumption” (Newton et al., p. 260). The ideas that fast food makes children overweight, that the marketing of such items causes obesity in children, that overweight children have more healthcare costs, and that fat kids eventually become fat grown-ups were each refuted with evidence from scientific studies from America, Canada, and the UK. Basham and Luik conclude that the idea of fat children is not scientific, but cultural (Newton, et al., p. 262).
Back Where I Started Neither of these essays addressed the issue as a whole, each one focusing on one small segment of children’s advertising. While Basham and Luik were convincing in their take on the Happy Meal toy, I have to admit I was aware of this issue going into the assignment and was already in agreement with them before I read the article. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors would approve the ban a few weeks after their article was published and McDonald’s immediately found a work-around (Huffington Post, para 3). Just as Clifford notes in her essay, the company found a way around the advertising rule and now offers the toy for sale with the purchase of the Happy Meal for an additional ten cents, with the dime going to their flagship charity, the Ronald McDonald House. While the extra funding for the Ronald McDonald House is a good thing, I have to wonder about the other work-arounds used by other companies who find their hands tied by limits on traditional print ads or television commercials. With the advertising now being, as Clifford puts it, “more subtle” (Newton et al., p. 258), it will be more, not less, difficult for children to separate advertising from content. It seems to me the traditional form of advertisement were easier for parents to point out and children to recognize. In this way, Clifford’s article actually put me even further into the “no” camp on this issue than I was going into it, which was the opposite of her intention. Finally, while discussing the issue of the ethics of influence this week on the class discussion board, another classmate’s posting led me to an epiphany. While the rest of the class posted about advertising, Jason Franks wrote about a work-related situation. The posting reminded me that we are always surrounded by some form of “advertising”. Whether it comes from a manufacturer/marketer or comes from the person in front of us, we need to know how to recognize and process it. Restricting ads for children takes away a teachable moment and may leave the child unprepared. A child who is taught to be skeptical when the parent points out the tricks of an advertisement is less likely to be taken advantage of by the school-yard con-man or the street hustler selling a “brand-new” ipod for $10.

References
The Advertising Self-Regulatory Council. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.asrcreviews.org/category/caru/about_caru/
The Huffington Post. (2011). San Francisco Happy Meal toy ban takes effect, sidestepped by McDonald's. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/san-francisco-happy-meal-ban_n_1121186.html
Newton, L., Englehardt, E., & Pritchard, M. (2013) Taking Sides Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.