Some people in class might have seen me offering Mini Snickers candy bars out at the Diversity Symposium. There were two main reasons I wanted to bring Snickers candy. First, more people come to your booth if you have candy. Second, in 2010 and 2011 Snickers donated 2 meals to Feeding America every time someone texted a code on the side of a Snickers bar package. I already knew this information going into my presentation, which was about alleviating child hunger. However, the night I bought the candy I decided to do a little extra research to make sure Snickers didn't have any hidden dark secrets that someone might bring up at the Symposium.
I discovered this...
"We have a Marketing Code that governs all our promotional activity and states that we only promote our products to people aged 13 and over as this is the age at which we believe that people can make informed choices about sensible snack consumption".
My first reaction was that they had read our articles in class regarding children under the age of 3 recognizing logos and strategies to develop brand loyalty in young toddlers and were flat out being deceitful. I assumed that they said this because it was a requirement by a nutrition law of some kind. So I investigated further and actually real their Marketing Code policies.
I was way wrong.
One example of how Mars Chocolate is not marketing to children is through the M&M characters. Haven't you noticed the characters becoming more adult friendly with adult style jokes?
Another example of Mars Chocolate not marketing to children is through their guidance of not purchasing advertising space where a quarter of the audience will be under 12 years old.
Not only is Mars Chocolate not marketing to children, they are taking action to help improve child media literacy! They provided start up funding for a program that "provides free advertising literacy programs for primary schools, giving children the tools to assess and critique advertising messages in their daily life".
If you were needing extra justification to get that Snickers bar or bag of M&M's from the vending machine, your welcome.
http://www.mars.com/global/about-mars/mars-pia/our-brands/communicating-responsibly/marketing-our-brands-responsibly.aspx
This is very cool, I didn't know this.
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