The Future Of

Junk Food Advertising

Episode Summary

What makes junk food advertising so successful and how can these messages be counteracted?

Episode Notes

What makes junk food advertising so successful and how can these messages be counteracted?

Episode Transcription

Jessica Morrison:          00:00                This is the Future Of, where experts share their vision of the future and how their work is helping shape it for the better.

Jessica Morrison:          00:09                I'm Jessica Morrison. It's usually easier to pick up some takeaway at a drive through for dinner instead of preparing a fresh meal with healthy whole ingredients. But research has shown that having an unhealthy diet, particularly when combined with being overweight is the leading contributor to poor health and premature death in Australia and worldwide. In this episode, I chatted with consumer and branding experts Doctors Isaac Cheah and Anwar Sadat Shimul to discuss how advertising is exacerbating the junk food epidemic and how their research is helping to counteract these messages. If you'd like to find out more about this research, you can visit the links provided in the show notes.

Jessica Morrison:          00:50                So Isaac, what is junk food and what does it do to our bodies?

Dr Isaac Cheah:             00:54                Okay. So I think the common misconception is that junk food is the same as fast food or easy food. So with junk food, we usually categorise it as a type of food that is less nutritious or is low in nutritional value, normally prepackaged, prepacked, and also pre-manufactured, right? So I think that really sets it apart from say fast food, because you do have fast food that's actually quite nutritious, right? They do have a lot of fast food now that have some form of nutritional value and it begs the question as well: "How often it's being consumed, right?", because having McDonald's once a week isn't going to do much to you. But if you have it every day for dinner, for breakfast, it's going to take a big toll on your body.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             01:41                So scientific reports have told us that junk food is highly correlated with type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, obesity, which is some of the major, I think, health concerns that we have in Australia and globally as well. So that would be sort of my understanding of junk food and obviously that harmful effects that it has.

Jessica Morrison:          02:02                I mean, it is commonly known that junk food has some pretty harmful effects on our body if we're having it a lot. So why do we consume it, knowing that it's bad for us?

Dr Isaac Cheah:             02:12                Great question. It's almost knowingly consuming something that's bad for you. And I feel like a lot of this has to do with exposure and the fact that we're conditioned to, I guess, this whole idea of junk food, "[that] it's okay to have it, right?" And we have to understand that with junk food, the major appeal from that comes from a number of different, I guess, sources. The fact that I think it's highly related to food cravings. It for some reason tastes better than a bowl of salad, right? And there's a peer pressure element to it as well. Okay. And I feel when you see people do it, you want to do it as well. You want to have a burger, have something that's a little bit less healthy because you feel like you deserve it. And I mean, I guess the bigger context of things is that we're so conditioned to see commercials, advertisements, promotions around junk food. We also know that junk food's a lot more affordable as well. So depending on who you're targeting, you're going to be able to get away with that.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             03:15                Now, if you combine all these pieces to the puzzle, it does make it a very quick and attractive option, especially if you're time poor, and given our current working conditions for most industries and again, moving forward, it is really that option. And we compensate unfortunately, a lot on health and nutrition for that extra half an hour that we get.

Jessica Morrison:          03:39                That's how I look at it, so ... What makes junk food advertising so successful?

Dr Isaac Cheah:             03:46                I think it's the target audience. It's the receptivity of who they're targeting, right? At the same time, I feel when you look at junk food companies: McDonald's, Coca-Cola to a certain extent, Burger King, they've done a whole heap of advertising and they've sort of been around for such a long time that people are so aware that you don't really have to do a lot in order to really try to understand what they're about. They're in your daily conversations, everybody knows that what they kind of stand for as well. And with advertising it then sends a very clear set of messages that: "This is already what you know, what's the next call to action, right?" We're so conditioned to know that this is quick, easy, tastes good, makes you feel great. And that's what the messages are essentially sending to the consumer. And that's why I feel, like, because they have good targeting, they know who to target and they have the right messages and right elements coupled with great promotion. It makes it a whole lot easier and a whole lot successful, especially with certain cohorts.

Jessica Morrison:          04:59                Shimul, you've recently researched ways to counteract the messages put forward by junk food advertisements. Were you surprised by any of your findings?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        05:06                Yeah. I mean in our research, we tried to explore what kind of message framing can influence the consumers' or the people's intention to avoid junk food. Now, every day we see lots of advertisement messages, communication messages that says "avoid junk food". So we notice that there are two kinds of messages, message framing. One is gain framing, one is loss framing. So the gain framing is like what you can achieve, what you can gain, by avoiding the junk food. The loss framing message is what you will lose if you don't avoid the junk food. So the purpose of the two types of messages are to avoid junk food. One is what you can gain, the other one is what you lose if you don't do it. Now, interestingly, we find that the mere message type does not create the intention to avoid junk food.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        05:55                So our point was that so does it depend on the type of people who are getting the message? And in psychology, we have two types of people. There's a theory called regulatory focus theory. And it says that there are two types of people. One type of people are promotion focused. They want to achieve the positive things. One type of people are prevention focused. They want to avoid the negative things. Then in our study, we combined the two types of messages, the gain focus and the loss focus, and two types of people, promotion focus and the prevention focus. And we found that when the promotion-focused people are presented with a gain-framing message, they have a stronger intention to avoid junk food. And when the prevention-focused people are presented with a loss-framing message, they have intention to avoid junk food strongly. So the point is, it's not only what you are saying, how you're saying, to whom you're saying, that is important. So this is something, one of the key findings of our research.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        06:50                And surprisingly, we found that most of the respondents, they understand the perceived risk of junk food. They understand that it is risky, but that risk perception does not motivate them to avoid the junk food. So only telling the risk factor, perhaps is not enough. We need to combine the appropriate message framing, and we need to find the appropriate people also. So the right message should go to the right people to create ... to generate the intention to avoid junk food.

Jessica Morrison:          07:20                Wow. It's not exactly easy, is it? And how do you hope other organisations might be able to implement your findings into the future to sort of avoid this?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        07:30                It's [an] interesting question. So in our research, we conducted it within the context of junk food. So avoiding junk food, but at the same way, if some of the organisations, they want to promote healthy food, for example, eat more vegetables, avoid the sugary drinks, they can use the same mechanisms that we used in our study. It can be for some other cause-related marketing. It could be for an anti-smoking campaign. It could be for some donation charities that can use the message framing, and they can find the people who are promotion focused and who are prevention focused, and they can combine the message appeal with the people's types.

Jessica Morrison:          08:04                Does this basically sort of show that organisations in any sort of marketing sense need to be basically having not just one key message, they've almost going to be having some messages, is that what you found?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        08:18                Exactly. Exactly, because one size doesn't fit everyone. So we need to identify not only what we are saying, to whom we are saying. So the message receiver is important also.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             08:30                Especially in public health. I think that's very, very important that we understand that as much as there's some very generic messages, we have to understand that there are some very key priority groups of people that need to hear certain messages as well. So that's, again, coming back to that strategy, that's not one size fits all. We have to cater for some groups very differently.

Jessica Morrison:          08:50                When you looked at the junk food advertising in this research and you talked about the gain and the loss. Can you give us some examples?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        08:58                Yeah. Yeah, sure. In our experiment, we manipulated the situation so that the participant is imagining that the participant has gone to the annual checkup and the doctor advised that the participants should reduce the junk food consumption and then gave you a flyer. And that flyer was our manipulation element or the 'instrument'. And what we did, one group of people, they got the gain framing message that: "If you avoid junk food, you will get healthy heart, healthy weight loss, good mood, good sleeping." The other group people, they got the loss message framing. And they got that: "If you don't avoid junk food, you will have obesity, you will have cardiac issues, you'll have bad mood, you will gain weight" and so on. And we did a pre-test for that. And we found that that really works. Then we went into the main study.

Jessica Morrison:          09:44                Interesting. Really interesting. Often supermarkets will have discounts on junk food rather than healthy alternatives. So what are other junk food advertising issues people should be aware of?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        09:56                Yeah, that's really interesting. And what you said is true, that we see lots of advertisement and we see that most of the discounts, promotions are on the junk food. Now within the context of the food area, the fact is that the consumers are not cash poor, they're time poor. And if you look into the advertisements, they're always focusing on quick food, easy food, pick up, delivery. But at the same time, we have to understand that it is possible that people can have healthy food within a short period of time. They can prepare it. There are so many options to make a meal within 5 minutes, 10 minutes. So this is one thing.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        10:29                But for that advertisement, I believe that one of the key challenges are the kids, because they're exposed to lots of advertisements and they are demanding, they're emotional. Their cognitive procedure is not as strong as we adults have.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        10:43                I have one little one, seven years old. She comes from a school, but recently I'm noticing that she's very picky with like, "Oh, this is sugary drinks. I don't want to have these." And I noticed that in this school that the teachers or some of the programs, they are promoting that this is sugary food, that this is unhealthy. In my time we did not have this.

Jessica Morrison:          11:03                Wow.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        11:03                So if you ask me personally, perhaps I take more sugary food than my little one takes, and this is a really good thing to do: educating the new group of, new generation of customers. Okay. So this is Number One, education awareness, and perhaps the important one is resist the temptation. That is important.

Jessica Morrison:          11:23                I remember that when you're talking about little ones, I just ... The shopping trip with my toddler and they don't understand and they see the pretty ads and no matter how much you try and sort of limit that, it is all around, isn't it? It's hard, certainly hard. Isaac, some local and federal governments around Australia and the world really have any shaded bans on junk food advertising on government property. Do you foresee more governments going down this pathway?

Dr Isaac Cheah:             11:53                I would say yes. And I think it's timely because we're currently in this pandemic situation and there's a huge emphasis on obviously staying healthy. I say this with also a little bit of reservation, because I know that having a healthy diet and not consuming junk food to some people may be perceived very differently as well. So I'm not going to say that you cannot have junk food, and I'm going to probably also go on a limb to say that regulation is also important as well in certain places. So I do foresee that given the current context, that this will continue, not just with outdoor advertising, not just with transit advertising, for example, but also with advertising online. And I think that's a huge thing as well.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             12:39                So things like understanding privacy, understanding regulation, are very, very important for both businesses and for consumers, being able to respect people in terms of the data that you collect, because everything now online is about remarketing of ads, making sure that you have that accuracy in terms of the data that you get.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             13:01                So you target the right people per se. And just going back to the previous point that Shimul and yourself, that you brought up as well, it's those sort of vulnerable groups that we really have to sort of have a gatekeeper there as well in terms of what they see and how much of whatever that is junk food related that they do actually get exposed to because these ads are so attractive to them. They have the message that is quite attractive to the influencer or the celebrities that are quite attractive as well. So again, they're very much attracted to that kind of stuff.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             13:32                So again, coming back to the question, I feel from, I guess, a regulatory body's perspective, or from a government's perspective, this will continue into the future. And as a point in terms of getting us to be healthier, but also to curb, I guess, messages that are perhaps unnecessary and also deemed predatory as well to certain vulnerable groups.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        13:51                I agree. I agree that we need to understand that what could be the mechanisms to influence the people. It could be the policy. At the same time, is the policy implementable? And who are the group of people being influenced by that, that is important also. And it comes from different stakeholders. It not only the policy, it could influence the marketing, it could influence the supermarket policies also, and the socio dynamics also.

Jessica Morrison:          14:16                I suppose it has to start from somewhere though, you talked about a gatekeeper. So, maybe by the sounds of what you've said, we want to see more of this into the future and more–

Dr Isaac Cheah:             14:25                Yeah–

Jessica Morrison:          14:25                Regulation because it sort of needs to happen otherwise.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             14:28                Yeah. No, we actually have to do something about this because it's so second knowledge and second nature to a lot of people, but I think there needs to be some sort of a fence that's being put up to say, "Well, education is great, community supports fantastic. But where do we ... How much sort of advertising allowance system given to these national, international corporations to come in to spread these different messages as well? Can we limit that? Can we regulate that?" And to what extent, so that's a discussion that goes further beyond just this research really.

Jessica Morrison:          15:06                Absolutely. What do you both think the future holds overall for the junk food industry?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        15:13                By looking into the current picture, it seems like the industry is growing because only in Australia, the current industry size is about $21 billion. And the global market is expected to grow by 4.6% by 2027.

Jessica Morrison:          15:26                Wow.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        15:27                And also over the last one and a half years during the pandemic, we have noticed that a lot of people are ordering food or staying at home. Sometime people feel that "I'm not feeling well and not motivated". They order food from outside. And most of them are not the healthy choices. So within the current picture, we believe that maybe in the short term it will grow. But if the communications programs, awareness programs, are really coming up, I believe that after 10 years, the junk food consumption will go down.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        15:55                Okay. And also there have been so many new ways of motivating people. One of our current research [projects] we are doing is mindful eating. That is, if you're eating something, are you mindful? Do you care about the nutrient value? How much you're eating, what you're eating, with whom you're eating. So that mindfulness is also one of the key mechanism that could influence the future people. Again, the key point is policy. The key point is awareness. The key point is knowledge. And the key point is future. We have to think about the future.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             16:24                I completely agree. I kind of feel in the short term, in the next three to five years, I think the perception of junk food in itself sort of remained quite constant in the sense that people kind of know what it is. And because of the fact that we're really time poor and we're going through this COVID period and there's this new thing called COVID eating now. So how do you ... what do you eat during the COVID time? We're obviously really lucky to be in Perth to avoid all these different lockdowns. But if we look at our fellow Australians over in the Eastern states, it's tough, they're doing it tough. And usually in a lockdown-type situation, you tend to go for a very convenient stuff and who knows, they do say junk food is great for when you're locked up and depressed and all that. So it's very sad, but it is the way things are.

Jessica Morrison:          17:14                And you have Governments also saying, and industry saying, "Oh, support [local businesses]," which is great. Obviously we want to support those businesses.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             17:21                Absolutely.

Jessica Morrison:          17:21                But yeah, like you said, people are eating out more then as a consequence.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        17:24                Yeah.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             17:24                Yeah.

Jessica Morrison:          17:24                Not saying that supporting business isn't wonderful.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             17:24                Right.

Jessica Morrison:          17:24                But yeah, there's obviously that encouragement.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             17:31                Definitely that tug of war. But we do see in the long term that there could be a lot of different ramifications for the junk food industry. I mean, it's almost like they've fluctuated in terms of consumer sentiment around: "Do they think they're good? Do you think they're that bad?" So I think, but in the long term, we're also seeing a lot of other companies come up to, instead of cater for this whole need of convenience, also make sure that the guys that are buying from them some meal prep kits and all that, that they're healthier options basically.

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        18:02                Yeah. I agree.

Jessica Morrison:          18:05                And just to finish up, what inspired both of you to research in this particular area or in this field?

Dr Anwar Sadat ...:        18:12                My research area is consumer behaviour and Dr Isaac, his research is in communications. Then we thought [about] how consumers behave in different aspects of consumption and food is one of the big things in the area now. And we thought that, "Okay, fine. There are lots of foods, lots of choices, but what is good, what is bad?" At the same time we wanted to do something that will have practical implications, that will have impact on the society and that can be applied in practise. So we thought that "Let's go into the food area, healthy eating area." And in fact, before junk food, we did one research on red meat eating, the drivers and barriers in reducing the red meat consumption. And we have done on junk food and our current project is on mindful eating. So this is the kind of the motivations we had.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             18:57                Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely one of our research sort of areas, but also I feel like it's such a timely topic now to talk about, health and especially in terms of how we're receiving health-related messages or even ads online and offline as well. And we also find that moving forward as well, this would have a lot of different implications on different stakeholders, different population groups and so on. So that was something that, again, the whole practicality, other dimensions that it came in, but again, being very, very timely and relevant, I think that's sort of what drove us to really take a sort of a dive into this literature and the research and just to see what sort of findings we get out of that.

Jessica Morrison:          19:36                You talked about practicality. We all need to eat.

Dr Isaac Cheah:             19:38                Yeah, absolutely.

Jessica Morrison:          19:38                And we all seem to be at some level influenced by the ads around us. So thank you both for coming in. It's been a really fascinating discussion and really appreciate your time. You've been listening to the Future Of, a podcast powered by Curtin University. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it. And if you want to hear some more experts, stay up to date by subscribing to us on your favourite podcast app. Bye for now.