Brands Marketing Unhealthy Food to Children Via TikTok Influencers:Study

With the rising recognition of social media platforms, companies have additionally learnt to faucet into the large attain that these web sites and purposes supply. Now, analysis means that manufacturers are utilizing TikTok customers to advertise their unhealthy meals and drinks whereas turning them into model ambassadors. The researchers concluded, after analysing the video content material posted on TikTok. They highlighted that kids utilizing the platform are uncovered to a wide range of unhealthy meals loaded with salt, sugar, and fats by on-line advertising. The analysis confirmed that this publicity impacted the meals preferences, consumption, buying, and requests of the viewers. 

In the study, printed in BMJ Global Health, researchers have burdened that whereas the platform enjoys vital recognition amongst kids, no analysis earlier than them tried to look at the impression of unhealthy meals advertising on TikTok customers.

They started by scanning round 539 situations of video content material posted by 16 main meals and non-alcoholic manufacturers on their TikTok accounts. This was based mostly on international model share as of June 30, 2021. The researchers additionally assessed the content material generated by customers in response to the hashtag challenges given by the manufacturers.

As this was an observational research, it’s price noting that it could possibly’t set up causality. The researchers additionally acknowledged that thesampled user-generated content material could not have been consultant of a branded hashtag problem, and so they weren’t capable of measure kids’s publicity to manufacturers’ promotional actions or to user-generated content material.

However, the researchers note that “model exercise has quickly elevated—with most movies posted within the 6 months previous information assortment—and contains instigation of branded hashtag challenges that encourage user-generated content material that includes model merchandise, brand-supplied movies or branded results.”

The most common marketing strategies adopted by these brands, which had followers ranging from 14 million to 1.6 million, were branding videos, product images, engagement, and celebrities and influencers.

The engagement strategy involves amplifying brand hashtag challenges that are aimed at encouraging users to create content featuring products, videos, or branded effects such as stickers, and special filters of the brands. It was observed that the collective views amassed by user-generated content from single challenges ranged between 12.7 million and 107.9 billion. In most of the sample videos, the sentiment was found to be positive.

“Analysis of a sample of brand-relevant user-generated content created in response to these showed that branded hashtag challenges are effectively turning users into, in TikTok’s words, ‘unofficial brand ambassadors,” the researchers said.

They further underlined that the substantial reach of influencer marketing was alarming as it has been seen that the increased exposure to unhealthy food-related content has led to an increase in energy intake from both junk and other food.