Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

Resources

FTC filings and other advocacy actions

Since 2007, consumer privacy and protection groups have filed dozens of complaints with the FTC and other regulatory agencies to restrict dangerous and misleading marketing practices that put children in harm’s way.

Big Food, Big Tech, and the global childhood obesity pandemic

Tech platforms popular with young people — including Facebook’s Instagram, Amazon’s Twitch, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Google’s YouTube – are working with giant food and beverage companies, such as Coca Cola, KFC, Pepsi and McDonald’s, to promote sugar-sweetened soda, energy drinks, candy, fast food, and other unhealthy products across social media, gaming, and streaming video. This report from the Center for Digital Democracy offers insight into the most recent industry practices and calls for federal and global action to check the growth of digital marketing of food and beverage products that target children and teens online.

The 4 Ps of marketing: Selling junk food to communities of color

The 4 Ps — place, price, product, and promotion — form the foundation of today’s marketing practices. However, food and beverage marketers often use these tactics specifically to target low-income groups and communities of color, raising a range of privacy and health concerns. This series of briefs describes each strategy, shows real-world examples of how they are used, and offers suggestions for advocates to take action and rein in marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages.

Junk food marketing to children of color: The current reality and what we can do about it — Slides for the field

All children deserve the opportunity to be healthy and thrive, but an all-too-common marketing practice in which food and beverage companies target kids of color with ads for junk food and soda is compromising the health of young African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. In this presentation, we outline the current landscape of junk food and sugary drink targeted marketing, and we share concrete actions that kids, parents, advocates, researchers, and policymakers can take to help hold industry accountable. This PowerPoint slide deck, developed by Berkeley Media Studies Group with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is available for free download, and we encourage advocates and others to adapt and use the presentation to help raise the visibility of targeted marketing as a health equity issue.

Health equity & junk food marketing: Talking about targeting kids of color

When advocates communicate about junk food marketing, do they talk about health equity? In this framing brief created by BMSG, we describe findings from a content analysis of materials on food marketing, show why children of color should be at the forefront of our conversations about and actions to reduce target marketing, and suggest how we all can get better at discussing this critical public health and social justice issue.

Investigating the digital path to purchase for food and beverages: A research agenda for the modern marketing age

Food, beverage, restaurant, and entertainment companies are increasingly harnessing Big Data to target consumers in retails settings, yet researchers do not know how their tactics influence diets and community health. To help close that knowledge gap, this document from BMSG reviews existing literature on food- and beverage-related digital marketing strategies and outlines recommendations for future research.