Obesity in Advertising

As a modern society, it is obvious that North Americans are getting fat! In fact, fatter and fatter each year! According to Forbes magazine, Canada ranks 35^th in 2007 among the world’s fattest countries. In my opinion, advertising has a lot to do with this. It plays a large role in making people obese even if indirectly doing so. Ad companies are always pushing boundaries and have figured out that shock value goes along way in our society. These same companies also have the ability to help prevent this. All this being said, Should we blame the ad companies, or the consumer? Or both?

Advertising specifically targets particular markets in order to persuade or skew people’s opinions about particular products. For example, the corporate hamburger giant McDonalds, market themselves geared towards families and in particular young children. There food has extremely high calorie count per hamburger and yet, market this same food as Blissful! (See photo below). It seems to me that companies like this do not have their consumers in their best interest in terms of health.

All these major corporations have the ability to use there millions of dollars towards advertising to perhaps do something completely out of the box…Speak the truth! What would the world be like if laws were passed regarding manipulative advertising in our society? What if food companies were not allowed to alter image of there products. Would this help a decline in obesity? I think so.

Finally, Is this something we should solely place blame on the ad agencies for being too good at their job? Of course not. Ultimately, it’s up to the consumer to keep conscious of what is worth paying attention to and what to through in the mental trash can! The only solution is to find a balance in advertising between what is appropriate or not. It is a moral duty! With that, I will leave you with a quote from Mike Searles president of Kids ‘R’ Us. He said “If you own this child at an early age…you can own this child for years to come”. Enough said I'd say!

Ad taken from http://www.sternadvertising.com/our-work/mcdonalds/