Coca-Cola called out for advertising to kids at protest
“In both in 2009 and 2012 Coca-Cola made a pledge to stop advertising to children however this pledge has not been honoured,” said the Healthy Living Alliance’s executive director (Heala) Sbongile Nkosi.
She said that the “consequence” of remaining exposed to this “mass advertising and billboards” is that “South Africa’s children are developing life-threatening diseases”.
According to a 2018 survey conducted by Heala in Gauteng schools, Coca-Cola has not stopped advertising to children in and around the school environment.
Coca-Cola’s head of public affairs and communications, Asyia Sheik, said the soda company has removed “more than 50 percent of our sign boards” outside schools.
“We have a responsible marketing policy we launched in 2009; we do not market to children under the age of 12… In 2016 we added guidelines which refer specifically to schools and surrounding schools,” she said.
On removing the remaining half of the sign boards she said “we are on a journey with that”.
WATCH here:
Corporate social responsibility and brand promotion
Heala delivered a list of demands to Coca-Cola including the removal of advertising, and the replacement of its unhealthy products, in school settings.
“Corporate social responsibility should not be used as an advertising platform in and out of schools… Empirical research has shown that in South Africa, obesity rates are increasing drastically. Sugary sweetened beverages have also contributed to the 13 percent prevalence of over-weight and obesity in children,” said Nkosi.
She said that after pledging to replace unhealthy products in schools with healthier alternatives, Coca-Cola had instead switched to providing equally unhealthy options.
While Sheik urged Heala to partner with the beverage manufacturer on finding solutions to obesity, Nkosi said it should start with upholding promises the company has already made.
“Marketing should not undermine the promotion of healthy balanced diets [to children],” said Nkosi. – Health-e News
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Coca-Cola called out for advertising to kids at protest
by Amy Green, Health-e News
October 17, 2018