Less advertising to children

CHILDREN & ADVERTISING 99 percent of the commercials on Swiss TV stations and program windows broadcast by Swiss Pledge members met the Swiss Pledge criteria in 2014.The member companies also achieved good results for advertising in children's magazines and on brand websites, once again fulfilling their voluntary commitment to responsible advertising behavior towards children under the age of 12 last year. 99 percent of the approximately 123,000 television advertisements tested complied with the strict Swiss Pledge criteria. The twelve member companies accounted for 35% of total gross TV advertising expenditure in the food and beverage industry in 2014. TV advertising accounted for 60 percent of the total advertising expenditure of Swiss Pledge member companies. In the case of children's magazines, all 39 audited issues met the Swiss Pledge criteria. The brand websites of the member companies also achieved a good score: Around 90 percent complied with Swiss Pledge.The voluntary commitment was initiated in 2010 by food and drink producers with the aim of adjusting their own advertising behavior towards children under the age of 12. Since then, the number of members has doubled. Today, twelve companies are committed to Swiss Pledge: Coca-Cola, Coop, Danone, Intersnack, Kellogg, Mondelēz, Mars, McDonaldʼs, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever and Zweifel Pomy-Chips. The initiative is open to other market participants who commit to complying with the minimum criteria.Nutritional criteriaAt the end of 2012, the criteria for Swiss Pledge were tightened through the gradual introduction of uniform nutritional criteria for each product category. Swiss Pledge was positively evaluated in 2011 by the Federal Office of Public Health as part of the national health initiative actionsanté and is so far the only program in Europe to have been accepted by a national authority.