Sesame Street’s creators have just launched an initiative called Eat Brighter. This initiative is focused on promoting healthy eating habits in kids, the ultimate goal of Eat Brighter is to prevent child obesity.
Elmo, the Cookie Monster and other Sesame Street characters will now be promoting fruits and vegetables. The Eat Brighter initiative means that all these characters will be licensed, free of charge, to any fruit and vegetable suppliers for the next two years. Big companies like Sunkist have already become part of the initiative and Sesame workshop is recieving applications everyday. The idea is to compete against junk food suppliers using the same marketing strategy they use to promote their products.
Although studies have shown that marketing of food to children works, I am not sure if it will have the same effect on fruits and vegetables as it does in cookies, chips and cereals. Children like the taste of ” junk food ” but children don’t usually like the taste of vegetables and fruits. This is going to be a challenge for marketing; Can it change the preference of children? Most likely it will help rise consumption of these products but the impact it will have may not be as big as expected.
The intention behind the project is good as Sesame Street is being socially responsible and helping combat one of the biggest social problems at the moment, child obesity. It gives a good impression about Sesame Street but lit also makes me think they are trying to fix their errors as t they also contributed to the problem by using these same characters to promote junk food for many years.
“Me Eat Vegetable: Cookie Monster Wants Kids to Snack Healthier.” The Guardian. The Guardian, n.d. Web.