http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55226-2005Feb26?
Minding Nemo
Pitches to Kids Feed Debate About a Watchdog

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page F01

  NEW YORK -- Unlike most people watching taped television shows, Tina 
Poturica doesn't zap through the commercials. In fact, the ads are all 
she looks at because her job is monitoring promotions aimed at children 
under 12 to make sure they are accurate and age-appropriate.

One recent morning, Poturica -- remote control in one hand, pen and 
legal pad nearby -- zipped through five hours of taped afternoon shows 
from a cable cartoon network. She slowed the tape to study pitches for 
cereal, snacks and toys. A new ad for a kid's fast-food meal caught her 
eye enough that she watched it three times. It featured only the 
chain's highest-calorie products (double cheeseburger, fries, soda) and 
not some of its recently introduced, more-nutritious alternatives. 
"Will a kid think they can only get the toy if they order the 
highest-calorie products?" Poturica wondered. So she fired off a letter 
to the company, requesting that it feature some of the more healthful 
products in future ads.

When health professionals and consumer activists call for greater 
government oversight of ads and promotions aimed at kids because of 
growing levels of childhood obesity, the food and advertising 
industries point to Poturica's employer, the Children's Advertising 
Review Unit, which analyzes 1,000 TV commercials, 250 magazine ads and 
countless Web sites each month.

"Our self-regulatory system is an active cop on the beat," said Robert 
D. Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers Inc., 
one of the three ad industry associations that, along with the Council 
of Better Business Bureaus, created the review unit, CARU. The group's 
supporters note that in the past two years, advertisers complied with 
the unit's requests in all but six of 222 cases.

Critics say CARU, with a staff of six and a $650,000 annual budget, 
can't keep up with $15 billion in promotions that companies aim at kids 
each year.

They say the group's efforts are hindered by guidelines that are too 
narrow, enforcement powers that are too weak, and the basic conflict 
that it is an industry group. There are no consumer group 
representatives on the 25-member board, and some of the six academic 
board members have consulted for advertisers and major corporations.

  The group was set up in 1974 after the Federal Trade Commission 
threatened to start regulating children's ads -- the main concerns at 
the time were sweetened cereals and vitamins -- if the industry didn't.

  On paper, CARU's mission "looks great," said Enola Aird, who has 
studied the unit as director of the Motherhood Project at a New York 
nonprofit. "But it really doesn't work to protect children because 
there are so many loopholes." For one thing, she said, by the time the 
group files a complaint and gets an answer, many of the ads have 
already completed their run "and they've already had their effect" on 
children.

CARU "says it is a watchdog, but it is empowered to do things so small 
you need a scanning electron microscope to see it," said Gary Ruskin, 
executive director of Commercial Alert, founded by Ralph Nader to 
monitor advertising, particularly ads aimed at kids.

Aird and Ruskin cited one of the group's main limitations -- that it 
monitors ads, but not the many other marketing techniques companies 
use. For example, CARU doesn't review corporate-sponsored 
"advergaming," where kids can play online games featuring Twinkies, 
Cheetos or Life Savers. Nor does it monitor school promotions, such as 
fundraisers at Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants or contests sponsored by 
candy companies to raise money for schools.

  Also outside the group's purview are special marketing events, such as 
Camp Geoffrey, the Toys R Us in-store summer activity program for 3- to 
8-year-olds. So too are viral marketing campaigns, in which companies 
sponsor sleepovers or use the Internet to recruit kids to spread the 
good word about their products.

  Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for 
Science in the Public Interest, said CARU should more aggressively 
police food ads aimed at children to limit junk food ads. "Their 
guidelines deal mostly with deception, but they don't deal with the 
nutritional qualities of food," she said.

CARU guidelines note that the appearance of a live or animated 
character such as SpongeBob SquarePants "can significantly alter a 
child's perception of the product," but they do not restrict the use of 
these characters in either the ads or the products themselves. So such 
products as SpongeBob cereal, Shrek-colored M&M's and Scooby-Doo! 
crackers are proliferating on store shelves.

"If characters are all that powerful, they shouldn't be used at all," 
Wootan said.

Advertising officials are quick to rebut the critics. "I challenge the 
critics to provide me with a direct and causal link between children's 
advertising and childhood obesity," Liodice said.

CARU Director Elizabeth L. Lascoutx said her group's purpose is "to 
ensure that advertising directed to children is truthful, accurate and 
appropriate for its intended audience. It was never intended that CARU 
be the arbiter of what products should or should not be manufactured or 
sold, or to decide what foods are 'healthy,' to tell parents or 
children what they should or shouldn't buy."

Even so, the organization is now playing a more active role in 
promoting nutritional products. "When they didn't have alternatives, we 
couldn't say, 'You can't advertise that.' But now they have 
alternatives and they should be showing these."

  CARU also is reviewing its definition of advertising to encompass 
more-subtle promotions, such as those in advergames, to make sure kids 
know when a product is being pitched. Any change would require 
companies to more clearly delineate when a product is being promoted in 
online games and magazines  .

The government has placed some restrictions on children's ads. The 
Federal Communications Commission requires broadcasting networks to 
clearly delineate between program content and commercial messages on 
children's shows, and bars ads with character endorsements from running 
during or immediately adjacent to that character's show. There are also 
limits on the amount of advertising that can be aired during children's 
shows: 10.5 minutes during an hour-long program on weekends, 12 minutes 
per hour show during the week. There are no such limits for adult 
shows.

  CARU's 14-page guidelines include such directives as "Snack foods 
should be clearly represented as such, and not as substitutes for 
meals." Others say the amount of a featured product "should be within 
reasonable levels" and should encourage good nutritional practices.

  Those rules led to a finding last April against Procter & Gamble for 
its ad showing four friends playing music with -- and eating out of -- 
multiple cans of Pringles. CARU said a single container should have 
been sufficient to serve all four kids. While P&G said the cans were 
featured as fun, and consumption was responsibly shown, it agreed to 
stop running the ad during children's shows.

More recently, in October, Unilever United States Inc. agreed to change 
future ads for Popsicle Scribblers Real Juice Pops after CARU 
complained that children "could reasonably take away the message that 
the pops consisted entirely or mostly of real fruit juice, although the 
pops only contained 20 percent fruit juice."

  More than 90 percent of the times that CARU questions an ad, the 
questions are initiated by CARU staff. In the 14 years that Lascoutx 
has been at the group, she said, only 10 actions were prompted by 
complaints from competing firms, and fewer than 10 were sparked by 
consumers. CARU's critics say that's because the organization doesn't 
aggressively publicize its existence; parents would file more 
complaints if they knew there was an advertising review unit and how to 
contact it. (The Children's Advertising Review Unit can be reached at 
70 W. 36th St., 13th floor, New York, N.Y 10018, or by e-mail at 
caru@caru.bbb.org.)

  In most of the challenged cases, companies agree to change ads, even 
if they disagree with the organization's concerns. But if companies 
refuse to comply, there's little the group can do. In some cases, when 
CARU contended ads violated federal laws, CARU notified government 
agencies such as the FTC, which cracks down on misleading and deceptive 
ads. Otherwise, "we can only issue press releases saying they didn't 
comply," Lascoutx said.

For example, just a few commercials after the fast-food ad Poturica 
challenged, she saw one she knew only too well. It was for a chocolate 
fondue and candy-making set called the Original Chocolate Factory. It 
featured chocolate melting on a double boiler on a hot stove. Some 
scenes showed hands dipping strawberries and crackers directly into the 
double boiler.

  Last August, CARU issued a press release saying the ad violated its 
guidelines because the product was inappropriate for children under 12 
and showed children in an unsafe situation. The advertiser agreed that 
the product was inappropriate for children and agreed to slightly 
modify the ad, CARU said, but continued running it on a cartoon network 
on the assumption parents or adult caregivers might be watching with 
their kids.

  "There was nothing we could do," Lascoutx said. "It happens, but 
rarely."