Activism Alerts - February 2004

• Stop Embedded Advertising By TV Networks [1]
• US Poverty - Families and Children in Need [2]
• The National PTA Snuggles Up With Coca-Cola! [3]

Stop Stealth Advertising on TV!

Commercial Alert has requested the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to require prominent disclosure of embedded advertising on television, including product placement, product integration, plot placement, title placement, paid spokespersons and virtual advertising. Increasingly, programs with these embedded ads resemble infomercials.

Commercial Alert's petition to the FCC contains a request for a rule-making to require conspicuous and concurrent disclosure of embedded ads on TV, a complaint against TV networks for failure to comply with federal sponsorship identification requirements, and a request for investigation of current product placement practices on TV. Commercial Alert also asked the FTC to investigate TV product placement practices, and to issue new guidelines for disclosure of TV product placement.

"Embedded advertising is the new reality of television, and it is time for the Commission to address it. TV networks and stations regularly send programs into American living rooms that are packed with product placements and other veiled commercial pitches. But they pretend that these are just ordinary programming rather than paid ads. This is an affront to basic honesty," wrote Commercial Alert in its petition to the FCC.

"To prevent stealth advertising, and ensure that viewers are fully aware of the efforts of advertisers to embed ads in programming, the Commission should require TV networks and stations to prominently disclose to viewers that their product placements are ads. In addition, product placements should be identified when they occur."

Commercial Alert is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.

Commercial Alert has more than 2000 members, representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. For more information, visit the Commercial Alert website at www.commercialalert.org [4].

What can you do?
Write to the FCC and the FTC and ask them to require prominent disclosure of embedded advertising.

Marlene H Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
9300 East Hampton Drive
Capitol Heights, Maryland 20743
(Read Commercial Alert's PDF document of complaint and petition for rulemaking sent to the FCC here [5])

Donald Clark, Secretary
Federal Trade Comission
600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Room 159
Washington D.C 20580
(Read Commercial Alert's investigation and guidelines PDF document sent to the FTC here [6])

Source: Commercial Alert

US Poverty - Families and Children in Need

The Census Bureau has released the dismal poverty numbers we've all been dreading. Poverty increased and median household income fell in 2002 for the second consecutive year. Here are the core numbers:

• The number of poor people increased by 1.7 million to 34.6 million; the poverty rate rose from 11.7 percent to 12.1 percent; and median household income fell by $500, or 1.1 percent, to $42,409.
• There were 3 million more poor people in 2002 than in 2000, the last year before unemployment began to rise.
• Deep poverty - those with incomes below half of the poverty line increased by 600,000, to 14.1 million. This increase was statistically significant.
• The number of children who were poor rose 400,000, an increase that was statistically significant. The increase in the poverty rate for all children under 18 - from 16.3 percent to 16.7 percent - fell just short of being large enough to pass the statistical significance test.
• The rise in poverty and decline in median income primarily reflect the increase in unemployment in 2002.
• The unemployment rate averaged 5.8 percent in 2002, up markedly from 4.7 percent in 2001 and 4.0 percent in 2000.

RESULTS [7], a grassroots citizens advocacy organization is lobbying Members of Congress for effective solutions to hunger and poverty in the U.S.

What can you do?
Join RESULTS in the following actions:

CARE Act: The Senate passed the CARE Act (S.476) in April, including $450 million in tax credits to create up to 300,000 Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). IDAs are special matched-savings accounts that enable low-income families to lift themselves out of poverty. However, the House bill does not contain the IDA tax credit. Tell Members of Congress to Keep IDAs in the CARE Act! [8]

Head Start: The House of Representatives passed legislation in July that could dismantle Head Start. Take Action [9] to ensure that the ALL children have access to quality early childhood programs!

Funding for Child Care: The PRIDE bill [10] contains provisions that could significantly decrease the number of low-income parents currently able to provide quality child care for their children while increasing work hour requirements and limiting what counts as "work". Ask your Senators to support the amendment to increase funding for child care and oppose the final bill.

For more information about poverty statistics released in the Census Bureasu report, read the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' analysis at www.cbpp.org [11]

The Marketing of Sex to Children

Sexualized, often pornographic, images and messages are being blasted on store window posters, tshirts, and websites across the US and directed right at our young people in malls and stores across the country. From Abercrombie & Fitch it's full-frontal nudity of teenage girls from the waist up, with only strands of hair to cover what little of her breasts they chose to. In another one young girl nuzzles two guys. Last year the promotion was thong underwear in girl's medium and large sizes with the words "eye candy" printed on them. When groups launched a protest the company refused to pull them. Ambercrombie spokesman Hampton Carney insists that the thing was "totally appropriate" for children.

Here comes another: French Connection UK is hitting the US markets, selling its new fragrances named FCUK Her and FCUK Him. The $10 million marketing campagin is focusing on the theme "Scent to bed" and is directing it right at pre-teens and teens. In one campaign invitations to a New York party were shaped like hotel doorknob hangers and read "FCUK in progress." A planned holiday promotion will ask stores to issue "License to FCUK" cards which include a code to enter www.scenttobed.com [12] for a list of the "best pick-up lines" and a chance to win a Club Med trip for six. Playing a naughty game of double entendre, it is the hope of the company, French Connection UK, that the brand name and suggestive imagery in the campaign will get the attention of teens, who are already the ongoing target of sexually oriented messages in music videos and video games. With lagging profits last year, the company decided to focus on its acronym and that move bolstered profits by a third in six months and perked company hopes for expansion in the United States.

Marketing expert Alissa Quart, author of "Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, " describes the promotion as "another example of non-traditional techniques to gather personal information. They are burying the advertising and making the product seem cool by making it into a game."

What can you do?

Discuss it in our Activism forum [13].

Join Dads and Daughters [14] in their action against Abercrombie & Fitch.

Contact these companies and protest their shameless sexualization of young people.

FCUK Fragrance
900 Third Avenue
Ninth floor
New York, NY 10022
Toll Free: 800-295-8877

Federated Corporate (Macy's, Bloomingdales, Goldsmith's)
7 West Seventh Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Phone: 513-579-7000
Fax: 513-579-7555
Toll Free: 800-261-5385
NOTE: Federated has agreed not to carry the product in their stores.

The May Department Stores Company (Kaufmann's, Hecht's, Filene's, Robinsons May)
611 Olive Street
St. Louis, MO 63101
Phone: 314-342-6300
Fax: 314-342-3064

Target Stores (Marshall Field's)
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: 612-304-6073
Fax: 612-696-3731
Toll Free: (800) 440-0680, option 1

Sources: Teen fragrance's titillating PR push could create a stink [15] Offensive Ads [16]

The National PTA Snuggles Up With Coca Cola

"Instead of promoting the welfare of children, the National PTA is promoting the welfare of a corporation that seeks to fill them with sugar and caffeine." writes Gary Ruskin, Executive Director of Commercial Alert.

Sponsorship of the National Parent Teacher Organization has become a commercial fete. It enables corporations to align themselves with the PTA for benefits such as the "Proud Sponsor of National PTA" mark on product packaging and sponsored program materials, recognition in NPTA's publications, National Conventions, and Exhibitions, as well as development of press materials and media messages about the sponsorship.

On June 4th Commercial Alert sent a letter to NPTA's President Shirley Igo asking her to cancel Coca-Cola's NPTA sponsorship. You can read that letter at Commercial Alert's website. [17]

What can you do? Contact National PTA President Shirley Igo at the toll free number 1-800-307-4782. Her office is extension 312. Her assistant is Barbara Sargent. The PTA's fax is (312) 670-6783 and the email address is info@pta.org [18]. Please tell them that the National PTA should sever its ties with Coca-Cola. Let them know that it is inappropriate for the National Parent Teacher Association to promote Coca-Cola, Disney, Microsoft, or any other corporation, or its products.

For more information contact Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012