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Marketing

01 Apr 2008

I am a producer of frozen spinach, "Spiny Spinach". Can I use pictures of cartoon characters on the packaging to encourage children to want to eat it?

Linking a cartoon character to a product is a popular way to advertise products to children. There are restrictions on advertisements aimed at children in the Code for Advertising to Children. In Australia, the Advertising Standards Board examined adverts all featuring Shrek, the cartoon ogre. They held that the mere inclusion of a cartoon in an advertisement did not of itself breach any code.

Advertisements directed at children should observe a high standard of social responsibility. If you wish to use a cartoon character on your packaging to increase your sales, there are a couple of pointers that may help to lower the risk of a successful complaint. First make sure that the ad does not contain any direct appeal to a child to ask a parent to buy particular products for them. In a fast food advertisement, the children struck a bargain with their parents to have the fast food for 5 meals a week. While this did not have a direct "call to action" to children, the ASCB upheld the complaint, as it could be interpreted as encouraging children to ask parents to buy the particular product for them.

You should also make sure that the character is not used to promote the food in such a way to promote excessive consumption or undermine a healthy diet for children. What is considered excessive will vary from product to product. If you sell foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar, you will need to consider this more closely. In the case of "Spiny Spinach", given that spinach is regarded as a 'healthy' food, an advertisement which uses a cartoon character to encourage children to eat spinach is unlikely to undermine a healthy diet.

Advertisements that include cartoon characters should not mislead or deceive children. In particular, they must be clearly recognisable as an advertisement by children and separated from editorials or programmes. To ensure you comply with this requirement, try to position the advertisement in the middle of a break (rather than at the start or end) and have high use of the product name so that no child would confuse the advertisement as anything other than a commercial.