Food marketing to teenagers: Examining the power and platforms of food and beverage marketing in Canada

Food Marketing and Power: Teen-Identified Indicators of Targeted Food Marketing

“…Such calls for effective policy and monitoring related to unhealthy food marketing to children have, in recent years, acknowledged the need to consider the teen audience as well. This stems from growing evidence that teenagers are aggressively targeted by food marketers across the full spectrum of communicative platforms [9]-from television [10], websites [11], and online video platforms [12] to social media [13][14][15][16] and within the built environment. Cultural spaces for teenagers are riddled with persuasive food marketing messages [9,12], which-given their powerful emotional and social appeals-teenagers are generally unable or unwilling to resist ([17] p.29).…”

“…This stems from growing evidence that teenagers are aggressively targeted by food marketers across the full spectrum of communicative platforms [9]-from television [10], websites [11], and online video platforms [12] to social media [13][14][15][16] and within the built environment. Cultural spaces for teenagers are riddled with persuasive food marketing messages [9,12], which-given their powerful emotional and social appeals-teenagers are generally unable or unwilling to resist ([17] p.29). This persuasiveness and ubiquity of food marketing matters, not merely in terms of immediate consumption, but also over the longer term, as it generates behavioral and taste transformations in ways not immediately apparent.…”

“…One challenge with the existing literature on teenagers and food marketing is that very little of it engages with the actual content of the marketing message. With the exception of a few studies [9,20], the specific persuasive techniques used within the advertisements are glossed over. To date, only one study [9] engages with the persuasive techniques found within marketing found across a spectrum of platforms.…”

Testing a Mobile App for Participatory Research to Identify Teen-Targeted Food Marketing: Mixed Methods Study

“…app will be further tested in the full project rollout currently underway with a much larger group of teenagers. Additionally, it is important to note that the content of the food marketing data collected during this pilot study is outside of the scope of this paper, which has been analyzed previously [ 20 ].…”

“…Participants then used the app for a 7-day period to submit self-identified examples of teen-targeted food marketing. Data submission involved the following steps: upload screenshot or take a photo of a food marketing example, and then input (1) the brand, (2) food type (independent text fields), (3) platform (ie, communication channel) where the example was found (selected from a preset list of 16 options, including “other” text field to add additional platforms), and (4) content “tags” indicating the teen-targeted marketing techniques used (selected from a preset list of 10 options, including “other” text field to add additional tags) [ 20 ].…”