The Museum of Brands in Notting Hill is a wonderful place to visit. Amy and Deborah (the blog editors) went in order to learn about the history of children and food. Questions that we were able to explore there included: How have children been used to advertise food? How has food for children been marketed to their parents? How has food been marketed to children themselves? Here are some of the objects that we found interesting.
Peek Frean Biscuits (Victorian)
Paintings of children were often used in Victorian marketing - the use of Millais’ painting “Bubbles” (originally “A Child’s World”) for Pears Soap being the prime example. This advertisement for Peek Frean biscuits was presented as an oil painting in an ornate frame, presumably to be hung in the home. The children seem reasonably clean and tidy, but the fact that the young girl in red is minding the baby suggests that they may be at the poorer end of the social scale. Certainly they seem to be looking at the biscuits with a depressed sort of longing as if such luxuries were not for them. This is a sentimental sort of advertising that we might find uncomfortable today.
Fry’s Milk Chocolate (1910s)
This chocolate box is branded with pictures of the same child with five slightly different expressions labelled “Desperation”, “Pacification” , “Expectation” , “Acclamation” and “Realisation”. It’s not entirely clear what some of these refer to: Is the child acclaiming the chocolate or is he being acclaimed with the chocolate? What is he realising? Nonetheless, it does seem that this is meant to give parents the dubious message that chocolate is an excellent way of managing your child’s behaviour.
Blue Ribbon Toffee (1920s)
As this toffee tin demonstrates, images of cute children were used in advertisements even if the actual food product wasn’t suitable for them. Babies conveyed that the product was pure and wholesome. Once he or she was able to move, a baby would 'naturally' want to crawl towards the toffees, such was their allure.
Sharp’s Toffee (1930s)
Some of the earliest marketing that we can definitely point to as being aimed at children directly uses toys and characters from popular culture. Using Disney characters on products of all sorts was seen as a smart strategy.
Crosse and Blackwell (1950s)
This advertisement feels very typical of the 1950s, when ‘traditional’ family values were being trumpeted loudly. Daddy’s just home from the office; Mummy, still in her apron, has been preparing the food and a boy and a girl make up the perfect family unit. Choose Crosse and Blackwell if you want a happy family just like this one is the message.
Kellogg’s Rice Krispies (1980s)
Kellogg’s, which began making breakfast cereals in 1906, has been particularly skilled at marketing directly to children, with cartoon characters and ‘free gifts’ to collect (Vogler, 2021). Amy remembers collecting these holograph pictures. Other cereal brands used a similar approach. ‘Shrinkies’, ‘free’with Weetabix, were pictures which you could colour in and then heat in the oven to make ….smaller, thicker pictures. It was terribly exciting.
Little Fella’s Pizza (2010s)
Today (or as close to today as the museum goes) we still see popular culture being used to advertise food. The marketing here is using several lines of attack on the parent/carer out shopping. The food is described as ‘nutritious’, but the hope is that the child will be using their own powers of persuasion (sometimes called ‘pester power’) because of the Frozen characters.
There certainly seems to be a trend over time towards food advertising aimed very directly at children. It seems to us that there are three possible ways to respond to this. One would be to do nothing and let any company trying to sell its product use any advertising ploy it chooses in order to maximise its profits. Few - even within the industry - we think, would argue for this when it comes to food advertising to children. A second option would be to impose more and more controls over the advertising industry. There are many who would argue for this, given concerns that children may be especially vulnerable to marketing ploys. But a third option would be to ensure children are taught to be critical consumers - in other words, to teach media literacy (Buckingham, 2003). Today, children are subject to advertising through an ever growing array of media, so developing thier understanding of the methods of persuasion used against them may be more important than ever.
References
Buckingham, D. (2003) Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vogler, P. (2021) Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain. London: Atlantic Books
Museum of Brands Website - https://museumofbrands.com/
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