Present Tense:There's a Coco Pops ad campaign at the moment that informs mum just how healthy a bowl of it is for the kids. As the Kellogg's website says: "Not only can your children enjoy the fun and adventure of Coco and his gang, you can be sure that they are getting a great start to the day!" Oddly, the website mentions how much of a child's daily allowance of vitamins and calcium an average serving contains, but not its average sugar intake.
Less surprisingly, it doesn't mention the most important selling point about tucking into a bowl of Coco Pops - one that Kellogg's was once more upfront about - which goes along the lines of: "Hey kids, it's chocolate for breakfast!".
The Coco Pops ad is part of a wider campaign by Kellogg's titled "wake up to breakfast". It's dropping 4.4 million leaflets around Britain this month and has three "celebrities" backing the campaign: TV's Supernanny Jo Frost, former footballer Ian Wright and, very importantly, Tomorrow's World presenter Philippa Forrester. So what if she's someone who simply presented a science programme. For Kellogg's purposes she's the next best thing to having Stephen Hawking on the packet.
This week, a group of real scientists made a valiant effort to highlight the ways in which various brands (including food and cosmetics) make scientific claims that can't always be backed up by evidence. The report by charity Sense About Science highlighted how Sainsbury's removed the preservative sodium benzoate from its soft drinks following "customer feedback", even when there is no evidence that it's in any way harmful in the first place; and how a Ski Activ8 yoghurt claimed its "unique blend" of B vitamins and minerals is proven to improve energy when combined with a healthy diet and lifestyle. The report pointed out that it wouldn't matter if you have a healthy diet in the first place. A pot of yoghurt won't help any more.
It was examining some of the more extreme examples, and some that made clearly outrageous scientific claims, but it represented a small fightback in the battle against the ingenuity of global brands. Because an ironic outcome of the gradual clampdown on marketing claims has been the ability of major brands to take the language of science, mix it with semantics, and use both to profitable effect.
This makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to know which claims are accurate and which aren't. And it's even more difficult for actual experts to get the truth to the public.
Occasionally a brand gets caught out. Innocent, whose charming packaging and genuinely healthy smoothies have been a great success story, was recently censured for incorrect claims that a "superfood" smoothie had "even more antioxidants than the average five a day". Alongside the flimsiness of the antioxidant claim was the revelation that it's considered only one portion of the five-a-day because of the way the fruit is pulped.
Such claims force the hyping of straightforward fruit and veg. For instance, there's the current campaign by the food safety agency Safefood pushing what it calls "superfoods". In fact, the foods being ascribed with super powers are no longer just the original superfoods - the likes of spinach and broccoli, which really did stand out as being supergood for you. Instead, in a tough marketing environment, the ante has been upped so that anything that's just naturally good for you needs to be given a cape before it can fly on to a plate.
The scientists' messages can easily get lost amid the colourful, high-octane pitch of the multi-million euro brands. Not only does it take time and effort to rigorously audit all the claims and tease out the ensuing semantics, but scientists can't advertise their message using cartoon monkeys or skateboarding tigers. They don't give away a free toy with their reports. Scientists don't get marketing crossover deals with Disney.
In fairness to Kellogg's, it has stopped including toys in its packaging, and removed child-targeted messages from its website. Its central message, that breakfast is good for you, is a sensible and proper one, and it has some genuinely healthy cereals in its range. But it's difficult not to be cynical about a company that has touted Coco Pop Straws as a good way of getting your kids to drink milk. And it hit a wobble with a Corn Flakes ad last year that claimed that kids who had a breakfast were 9 per cent more alert than kids who didn't. That was banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority because it decided the evidence didn't back it up.
It's also hard to accept what a spokesman for the creative company behind Kellogg's latest campaign says: "It's all about education and awareness. The brief did not mention sales, but there is an understanding that that will take care of itself if we establish the importance of breakfast." But if was just about breakfast, they'd be telling kids to have porridge.
