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Banning Junk Food Ads On Disney Media Outlets: A “Game-Changer”, or a Mickey Mouse Measure?

Yesterday, with the help of first lady Michelle Obama, the Walt Disney Company announced that from 2015, it will no longer allow the advertisement of junk food on its media outlets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18336478). This announcement has been lauded by those who are alarmed by the colossal statistics regarding childhood obesity in the USA. Mrs. Obama herself hailed the initiative as a “game changer”.

The USA (but not only the USA) is facing an epidemic of childhood obesity. 17% of all children and adolescents in the USA are clinically obese, triple the rate of what it was one generation ago (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/index.html). This percentage might even be higher according to a recent study (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033308). Given the numerous health problems associated with obesity, this is clearly a cause for grave concern.Read More »Banning Junk Food Ads On Disney Media Outlets: A “Game-Changer”, or a Mickey Mouse Measure?

A World without Advertising?

Recently , UNICEF launched their Children’s Rights and Business Principles, the sixth of which says that businesses should ‘use marketing and advertising that respect and support children’s rights’. This is hard to deny, as is the claim that many companies are seeking unjustifiably to manipulate children and their parents for profit. Indeed there seems little reason to restrict… Read More »A World without Advertising?

‘No smoking’ signs trigger urge to light up: Communism, Marriage, Evidence-Based Medicine and the Fate of the World

Before you read the blog, please take:

General Knowledge Ethics Quiz

  1. What is the main cause of climate change?
  2. What is main cause of global poverty?
  3. Why does terrorism exist?
  4. What caused the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster?

Write your answers on a piece of paper for reference. I will provide my answers presently and we can compare.

THE BLOG

Brian Earp, a master’s student at Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology, has found that ‘no-smoking and anti junk food adverts can be counter-productive by encouraging the behaviour they warn against’. Mr Earp asked 29 smokers to look at 25 images, some of which included ‘no smoking signs’. He found that when they viewed images of the signs they were more motivated to smoke than when they did not see the images.

Read More »‘No smoking’ signs trigger urge to light up: Communism, Marriage, Evidence-Based Medicine and the Fate of the World