Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700-719)
13 NOVEMBER 2003
MRS CILLA
SNOWBALL, MR
BRUCE HAINES
AND MR
ANDREW BROWN
Q700 John Austin: Presumably they
are asking their age for a reason.
Mr Haines: I think they ask their
age because if a child is under 14 it would be sensible to make
sure that there is some parental control over it.
Q701 John Austin: The information
is not used for marketing purposes.
Mr Haines: (Instructions received)
This is from my advisor: Kellogg's have to ask parents for permission
first.
Q702 John Austin: I am sorry?
Mr Haines: The children have to
ask their parents for permission first before they can enter anything
into the site.
Q703 John Austin: You have a mechanism
for checking that they have done so?
Mr Haines: I understand that is
the case.
Q704 Chairman: I find this interesting.
In our household, we certainly have one parent who is computer
illiterate, who would not have a clue what is going on. My children
are somewhat older than that age group but, going back a few years,
I am just not quite sure how that would work
Mr Haines: As I understand it—and
I would admit to not being absolutely up-to-date myself here—the——
Q705 Chairman: You can get back to
us on this, Mr Haines.
Mr Haines: I think I should get
back to you.
Q706 Chairman: It is an important
issue.
Mr Haines: I absolutely accept
that it is a crucial issue and, rather than bumble through the
wrong answer, I would rather give you the facts.
Mr Brown: I think it is also an
issue that is being reviewed at the code level, and there may
be some information that I could provide.
Q707 Chairman: Is that within your
industry you are talking about?
Mrs Snowball: Yes.
Mr Brown: Yes.
John Austin: Kids do not have their parents'
consent when they log into paedophile chat rooms, do they, so
I do not see how you can have any knowledge at all as to whether
children have their parents consent.
Jim Dowd: And we are not saying the CocoPops'
site is a paedophile chat room.
Q708 Chairman: Would you come back
to us afterwards.
Mr Haines: I will come back to
you, yes.
Q709 Dr Taylor: Coming back to health
education—and we have sort of touched on it a bit, but in
a bit more detail—I am delighted to hear, as we have heard
from other people that the industry—the advertising industry,
the food industry—wants to help the situation. I think you
put your finger right on it, Mrs Snowball, when you said that
fruit and vegetable producers do not have high advertising budgets.
When we contrast the amount spent on food advertising—we
are told it is something like £600 million a year, and the
amount spent on public education, something like £2 million
per year—it is a tremendous contrast. Really, you have put
your finger right on one of the problems. Could I turn to Mr Brown's
paper, where you did a bit on how effective are the structures
for health promotion. You said that targets need to be kept realistic;
messages need to be kept simple and relevant. Could you give us
some idea of what sort of targets you were thinking of and what
sort of messages?
Mr Brown: That is me, I think,
is it not?
Q710 Dr Taylor: Yes. It is on page
5.
Mr Brown: The first submission.
Q711 Dr Taylor: Yes.
Mr Brown: Thank you. This is the
Charles Gallichan paper which that refers to. What Charles was
saying when he was running the Health Education Authority was
that there was a terrible tendency for people to come in and do
something, think, "It is done," and then leave it. The
great lesson of "Drink-Drive" was the 25-year commitment
to doing it, and the combination of stick and carrot and the breathalyser
laws. The whole thing was a very well worked out package. His
advice was: Don't think that any of these problems are easily
resolved. I think this is an issue of such complexity that we
should be looking at a 40-year campaign rather than a 20-year
campaign. We are probably living now with the problems that were
caused in the eighties rather than the problems caused last week,
but there is a whole series, and we need to sit down . . . That
is what I mean by realistic targets. I think the industry needs
to work together in a joined-up way and challenge joined-up government
to help it to devise long-term solutions to try to tackle the
issue of obesity. I do not think there are any short-term fixes
that are anything other than simplistic.
Q712 Dr Taylor: Is there anything
like the Colorado on the Move study going on in this country?
They have got it down to realistic targets: if you can cut your
intake by 100 calories a day, and increase your output, your use
of energy, by 2,000 steps a day (100 calories) at least you will
level out the problem. Is there anything like that going on?
Mr Brown: Not that I have seen.
Mr Haines: I was associated with
a campaign, working with the HEA some years ago, which attempted
to do that, but there were just such insufficient funds put behind
it that the message did not really get across.
Q713 Chairman: Could you tell us
a bit more about that. I would be very interested to learn about
that experience—and you might want to follow up with some
information.
Mr Haines: I can certainly give
you some information on that. It was a campaign which effectively
was trying to persuade people that if they could raise their heart
levels for a period of about 30 minutes every day, once a day,
then it would have a substantial positive impact on their overall
health. The campaign was successful in terms of recall of the
message, but such were the funds behind it that, as soon as the
campaign stopped, then awareness of that as a potential benefit
faded away.
Q714 Chairman: Basically, you would
support Mr Brown's argument that to do it effectively it has to
be a very long-term programme.
Mr Haines: Yes, it has to be a
simple message and consistently communicated.
Mrs Snowball: We have some relevant
experience on other safety and health promotion campaigns, both
in terms of anti-smoking and road safety. We started the "Think"
campaign that you mentioned earlier. I have a couple of observations
about campaigns like that, which I think are going to be critical
to cracking this problem. I think, as Bruce said, the language
has to be very, very simple. If we are trying to address "calories
in/calories out" we have to have some unification in the
messages, so that people really do understand that message coming
through loud and clear from all parties in this debate. I think
we have had quite a bit of success on relatively low spends. I
think more important than the absolute level of spend is the fact
that these spends are sustained over time. On projects like rear
seatbelts, for example, we had very, very low, modest advertising
budgets, but we were able to create an immediate effect and resonance
in behaviour-change programmes because that budget was sustained.
Having said all of that, with obesity and overweight behavioural
change is hard. It is hard for people to give up smoking, to lose
weight, to get into an active lifestyle, and we have to provide
all the support in terms of carrots and sticks to help people
address the problem. It is not easy. It does not happen overnight.
If you are the person who is overweight, it is going to take time,
and you need help and you need very simple advice. I think this
is absolutely critical to cracking this problem.
Q715 Dr Taylor: With your interest
in increasing exercise levels and the large amounts of money that
you have, would you be prepared to sponsor step counters for children
at school and things like that?
Mrs Snowball: We are very happy
to discuss with our clients any initiatives that are going to
contribute to solve this problem. I was at the session last week
and heard the debate about the price of pedometers. You have to
make that fun, for people to get engaged. We cannot be too worthy
about this.
Q716 Chairman: You have converted
Mr Bradley since last session. Look at him now!
Mrs Snowball: Congratulations.
John Austin: Dr Taylor has acquired a
different brand of pedometer.
Jim Dowd: He is marketing them.
Chairman: Sorry.
Q717 Dr Taylor: Do you make efforts
actually to convey nutritional information with the advertisements?
One of the things we will be taking up is that food labelling
is really not good enough. Advertising including the amount of
salt, the amount of calories, the amount of sugar, the amount
of fat, do you cover that at all?
Mrs Snowball: We do not cover
it in the advertising, but our clients cover it very extensively
on pack. In advertising, typically, you are dealing in a currency
of a 30-second time slot or shorter, and I think you need to see
this information in context. So, no, we do not have salt and fat
content in advertising at the moment but we do work closely with
our clients on getting those messages across on packs.
Q718 Dr Taylor: Somehow the tobacco
manufacturers have the stark words "Cigarettes Kill".
I do not expect you to put that on, but could you emphasise when
something does have a particularly high fat or salt content?
Mrs Snowball: I am not sure that
warnings on ads are appropriate if the essential tenet is that
the products are not dangerous in the first place. But I think
there is a place for nutritional information, expressed clearly
in words that we can all understand and see and grasp in a two
or three second time frame when we are looking at the information
as parents in stores.
Mr Haines: Kellogg's do sponsor
the Colorado on the Move programme. If there is any evidence I
can get from them, I would be delighted to send it to you.
Chairman: At some point, in my packet
of cornflakes I might find a pedometer! Think about that one.
Q719 Jim Dowd: Only if it is child
week, would you find that. Mr Brown, you mentioned in an earlier
answer the Code of Advertising Practice. Beyond national requirements
in different countries, the industry is essentially self-regulating.
Could you tell us how it actually operates. How is the code invoked?
What happens to people who transgress?
Mr Brown: We are talking about
non-broadcast advertising.
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