Children’s Food Campaign

Children’s Food Campaign is a part of Sustain - an 'alliance' (i.e. fake charity (#1018643) partially funded from grants from government and government related sources. For the financial year ending 2011, of £2.1M income, at least £0.64M was from either government directly, or government funded organisations. This number rises to at least £1.3M if funds from national lotteries are included.

ASA complaints

Lost - Wall's Ice Cream - Sep 2012

A website complaint that three adverts on [www.loveicecream.com]:

[...]gave a misleading impression of the nutritional value of the Twister, Solero, Calippo, Cornetto and Frusi Pot ice creams because they implied a high level of fruit content which the products did not warrant.

Seven paragraphs of Unilever's response boiled down to a couple of sentences in the ASA's reply of not upholding the complaint:

The ASA considered that the two product pages in ads (a) and (b) gave product information but did not make any nutritional or health claims...

[...]

We considered nevertheless that there was a relatively small amount of fruit on the page and that the product illustration in ad (c) was not sufficient to imply that a high level of fruit content was present in the lollies and give a misleading impression of their nutritional value.

[...]

Because we considered that the imagery and text of ads (a), (b) and (c) were appropriate to the products and did not overemphasise the fruit content of the ice creams, we concluded that the ads were not misleading.

Lost - Fanta - Sep 2012

A few weeks later (late September 2012) another ruling came out, this time for Fanta

The Children's Food Campaign (Sustain) challenged whether the ad:

1. condoned or encouraged excessive consumption of Fanta;

2. condoned or encouraged poor nutritional habits among children; and

3. suggested that by consuming Fanta, children would be more confident and popular.

[...]

Three issues were investigated, all were Not upheld.

Two Lost, one Won - Website games - Aug 2012 =

In August of 2012, they decided to attempt to shut down parts of websites that had children's games on them by complaining to the ASA.

Lost - Chewits

The Children's Food Campaign (Sustain) challenged whether the game encouraged excessive consumption of the product and poor nutritional habits in children.

Lost - Sugar Puffs

The Children's Food Campaign (Sustain) challenged whether the game encouraged excessive consumption of the product and poor nutritional habits in children

Strange how both complaints appear identical. Presumably there were others which the ASA haven't yet gotten round to deal with.

Both were thrown out - both concluding, strangely, with the same reason (though the ASA replies tend to be formulaic anyway)

We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 15.4 (Food, food supplements and associated health and nutrition claims) and 15.11 (Food and soft drink product marketing communications and children) but did not find it in breach.

Won - Scooby Doo

The next week an adjudication on a complaint about a Scooby Doo game was upheld:

The Children's Food Campaign (Sustain) objected that:

1. the website encouraged poor nutritional habits in children; and

2. the website was irresponsible because it used a licensed character to promote sweets to children.

[...]

1. Upheld (in relation to the Cola Capers section only)

[...]We considered that the majority of the content in Swizzels Town did not encourage either an increase in consumption of sweets or any other poor nutritional habits.

[...]Over three levels the game's character could collect almost one hundred cola bottle sweets. If the character was caught by the "angry parents" they would lose a life. We considered that the game, which was relatively long in duration, was aimed at young children and condoned eating a large number of sweets whilst hiding this fact from one's parents.

2. Upheld