Appetite xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Appetite
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet

Research review

Television advertising and branding: Effects on eating behaviour and food

preferences in children
Emma J. Boyland , Jason C.G. Halford
Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 1 December 2011
Received in revised form 5 January 2012
Accepted 28 January 2012
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Food adverts
Children
Marketing
Obesity

a b s t r a c t
Television provides one of the rst, and most intimate, experiences of commercial food promotion. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the effects of television advertising on childrens brand preferences are well established. However, its effect on actual food intake and the food choices in children of various weight
statuses has only recently been characterised. Despite regulation, children in the UK are exposed to considerable numbers of food adverts on television. These are predominantly for foods high in fat, salt and
sugar (HFSS), which are marketed to children using promotional characters and themes of fun. Such
adverts have been shown to cause signicant increases in intake, particularly in overweight and obese
children, and enhanced preference for high carbohydrate and high fat foods in children who consume
the greatest amounts of televisual media.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Links between television viewing and obesity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Television viewing and childrens food intake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The immediate impact of TV on food choice and consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The longer term impact of TV on obesity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Television food advertising and branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nature and extent of food advertising to children on television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Advertising impacts on childrens food preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Advertising impacts on childrens food intake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Introduction
Television inuences the attitudes, behaviours, and values of
viewers, particularly children (Byrd-Bredbenner, 2002; Nash, Pine,
& Messer, 2009). Consequently, television viewing and the resulting exposure to food advertising (Hamilton-Ekeke & Thomas,
2007; St-Onge, Keller, & Heymseld, 2003) and branding (Jaeger,
2006; Just & Payne, 2009) have been proposed as important factors
in inuencing food choice decisions and therefore determining dietary health and obesity risk. Children are major targets for marketing by the food industry, given that they have both independent
spending power (current and future) and a signicant inuence
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: e.boyland@liv.ac.uk (E.J. Boyland).

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over family spending. The inuence of television, television advertising and branding on food preference and eating behaviour in
children is the focus of this review.
Links between television viewing and obesity
It has been argued that greater than 60% of overweight incidence amongst children and adolescents in the US could be attributed to television viewing (Gortmaker et al., 1996). Importantly, it
has even been shown that television viewing in childhood can
independently predict increased adult body mass index, suggesting
a causal link (Viner & Cole, 2005).
Crucially, the balance of literature suggests that the association
between television viewing and obesity remains signicant even
when potential confounding variables such as socioeconomic

0195-6663/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.01.032

Please cite this article in press as: Boyland, E. J., & Halford, J. C. G. Television advertising and branding: Effects on eating behaviour and food preferences in
children. Appetite (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.01.032

E.J. Boyland, J.C.G. Halford / Appetite xxx (2012) xxxxxx

status, familial tendency to overweight (Hancox & Poulton, 2006)

and, critically, levels of physical activity (Eisenmann, Bartee, Smith,
Welk, & Fu, 2008; Epstein et al., 2008) are taken into account. Therefore, it is not simply the case that television viewing is linked to
obesity because it is a sedentary activity, rather the association appears to be due to the effects of television viewing on energy intake.

Television viewing and childrens food intake

The immediate impact of TV on food choice and consumption
Numerous studies have demonstrated that energy intake increases during television viewing. Specically, Crespo et al.
(2001) found that girls who watched 5 or more hours of television
a day consumed an extra 175 kcal per day on average compared to
those watching 1 h or less of television daily. Wiecha et al. (2006)
found an even bigger increase in intake to be associated with each
additional hour of television viewing per day. It is clear that the
cumulative effect of even a small daily increase in kcal intake could
contribute to a positive energy balance.
Typically, increases in caloric intake associated with television
viewing are chiey due to increases in the consumption of foods
that are both energy dense and low in nutrients (Davison, Marshall,
& Birch, 2006) (i.e. HFSS), so television viewing is associated with
poor overall diet quality. The amount of time spent viewing television has been found to be predictive of unhealthy conceptions
about food and poor eating habits generally (Signorielli & Lears,
1992; Woodward et al., 1997). Several studies have found that television viewing was inversely associated with intake of fruit and
vegetables (Boynton-Jarrett et al., 2003; Coon, Goldberg, Rogers,
& Tucker, 2001) or with individuals deriving more of their daily
energy intake from HFSS foods (Coon et al., 2001; Miller, Taveras,
Rifas-Shiman, & Gillman, 2008).
Furthermore, eating whilst watching television (whether eating
snacks in front of the television or having television viewing as part
of the meal time routine) has been shown to affect food choice and
caloric intake. Marquis, Filion, and Dagenais (2005) showed that
eating in front of the television was positively associated with childrens general consumption of a number of items including French
fries, salty snacks, ice cream, confectionery, pastries, sweetened
cereals, fruit beverages and soft drinks. It has been suggested that
children in particular consume a substantial proportion of their
daily energy whilst watching television, 20% and 25% for weekdays
and weekend days respectively (Matheson, Killen, Wang, Varady, &
Robinson, 2004), therefore television viewing could have a signicant impact on both the types of food items selected and the overall level of consumption.
The longer term impact of TV on obesity
Food advertising has often been proposed as a candidate for the
association between television viewing and adiposity. In support of
this, Lobstein and Dibb (2005) found a signicant, positive correlation between levels of overweight in nine countries (seven EU
countries, the US and Australia) and the number of television adverts for sweet or fatty foods broadcast in a 20 h period. Furthermore, a recent study by Zimmerman & Bell (2010) showed that
there was a signicant association between commercial viewing
in 1997 and BMI z-score in 2002 for children aged 06 years. This
association was robust even when exercise and eating while viewing were taken into account, which supports the assertion that the
link between TV viewing and obesity is not due to the former being
a sedentary activity, rather it indicates that it is the advertising on
television that is associated with obesity.

70

Mean proportion of ads (%)

60
50
40

Peak

30

Non-peak

20
10
0
% of food ads

% core

% non-core

% misc

Fig. 1. The proportion of adverts that were for food, and the proportion of food
adverts specically that were for core, non-core and miscellaneous food items
between peak and non-peak childrens viewing times (from 2008 data reported in
Boyland et al., 2011b).

Television food advertising and branding

Nature and extent of food advertising to children on television
Despite technological innovations such as the internet, television remains one of the most powerful sources of communication
we have (Abbatangelo-Gray, Byrd-Bredbenner, & Austin, 2008).
Perhaps unsurprisingly therefore, across the globe, television is still
the primary medium used for advertising food and drink products
(Eagle, Bulmer, De Bruin, & Kitchen, 2004; Henderson & Kelly,
2005; Story & French, 2004). In the US, $1 billion is spent annually
on youth-oriented media advertising, particularly on television
(Story & French, 2004).
National policies and practices regarding the control of food
advertising to children on television vary between countries, even
within the EU (IASO, 2010). Statutory legislation was introduced in
the UK in 2007 restricting the advertising of HFSS foods in and
around programming specically made for or of particular appeal
to children under 16 years of age (Ofcom, 2007). Regulations
regarding the content of food advertising (regardless of when it
is scheduled) were also applied at this time, prohibiting the use
of licensed characters, celebrities, promotional offers and health
claims in advertisements for HFSS products targeted at pre-school
or primary school children. However, despite these regulations, a
comprehensive study of over 5000 h of television on the channels
most popular with young people showed that children in the UK
are still exposed to more advertising for unhealthy than healthy
foods, even at peak childrens viewing times (Boyland, Harrold,
Kirkham, & Halford, 2011b) (see Fig. 1).
Criticisms of the regulations have focused particularly on the
way in which programmes of particular appeal to children are
identied, namely the use of audience indexing. This method applies advertising restrictions if programmes have an audience in
which the proportion of viewers under 16 years is at least 20%
higher than the proportion of children in this age group in the general population. This means that the food advertising restrictions
do not apply to programmes which also have a high adult audience, this describes most family programming and particularly
primetime entertainment shows which frequently attract child
audiences of over 1 million (a greater child audience than typically
watches child-specic programming) (Which?, 2006; Which?,
2008). In addition, there are concerns over the lack of restrictions
regarding (1) the use of brand equity characters (such as Tony
the Tiger promoting Kelloggs Frosties) in HFSS food advertising
as they are thought to inuence childrens food choices (see discussion below) and (2) brand advertising, where no food products are

Please cite this article in press as: Boyland, E. J., & Halford, J. C. G. Television advertising and branding: Effects on eating behaviour and food preferences in
children. Appetite (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.01.032

E.J. Boyland, J.C.G. Halford / Appetite xxx (2012) xxxxxx

shown but the brand logo and message (with strong associations to
the HFSS foods produced under that brand name) can still be
repeatedly reinforced.
Of the ten most frequently advertised food items, six were unhealthy items such as fast food, high sugar/low bre breakfast
cereals, chocolate/confectionery and snack foods (Boyland et al.,
2011b).
Similarly, numerous studies from around the globe have shown
that typically the majority of adverts broadcast are for unhealthy,
HFSS products (Batada, Seitz, Wootan, & Story, 2008; Batrinou &
Kanellou, 2009; Chapman, Nicholas, Banovic, & Supramaniam,
2006; Jenkin, Wilson, & Hermanson, 2009; Kelly et al., 2010). Overall, it is clear that the foods advertised reect a dietary pattern that
would be associated with increased risk of obesity and are not in
line with recommended nutritional guidelines (WHO, 2003).
The way in which these foods are advertised is also worthy of
note. A recent study in the British Journal of Nutrition (Adams,
Tyrrell, & White, 2011) found that in approximately a third of food
advertisements, an incidental food appeared alongside the item
that was the focal point of the advertisement (the primary food).
The most common food group represented among primary foods
was foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar (41%, e.g. chocolate,
cakes, full-sugar carbonated soft drinks). Among incidental foods
the most frequently represented food group was fruit and vegetables, and these foods were signicantly less likely to be high in fat
and/or sugar. So where a wider food context was present in the advert, this context tended to be healthier than the branded foods
that were the focus of the advert. The authors concluded that this
may be perceived as reinforcing the idea of a balanced diet, or may
add an unjustied aura of healthiness to the advertised food
(Adams et al., 2011).
Advertisers also use particular persuasive techniques to appeal
to children and young people (such as the use of appeals, promotional characters, celebrity endorsement and giveaways) (Committee on Communications, 2006), and such techniques do affect the
popularity of the advert with children (Nash et al., 2009). Again,
despite regulatory control in the UK, the use of promotional characters and other techniques known to appeal to children is widespread amongst food advertising on popular commercial
channels (Boyland, Harrold, Kirkham, & Halford, 2012). Children
naturally focus their attention on techniques such as animation
and visual effects, and emotional appeals do distract children from
other aspects of adverts for example nutritional disclaimers or
product information (Wicks, Warren, Fosu, & Wicks, 2009).
Branding is critical to product choice, particularly for children
and young people; therefore the majority of child-oriented food
advertisements take a branding approach (Connor, 2006). Television advertising is thought to be very effective at building strong
brands (Heath, 2009). Of all commodities, food is one of the most
highly branded items, with over 80% of US grocery items being marketed under a brand (Story & French, 2004). This level of branding of
food products lends itself to major advertising campaigns, and food
manufacturers carry out advertising activity with the aim of building brand awareness and brand loyalty as it is believed that brand
preference precedes purchase behaviour (Story & French, 2004).
Children are critical targets for marketing and branding activity;
they have independent spending power but also exert considerable
inuence over family purchases. Food and drink purchases are the
categories over which children have particular inuence (Sndergaard & Edelenbos, 2007). In addition, children are also seen as
teenage and adult shoppers of the future so that any brand loyalty that is fostered at a young age may reward the food company
with a lifetime of sales, potentially worth $100,000 to a retailer
(Escalante de Cruz, Phillips, & Saunders, 2004).
There are numerous examples of food branding activity used to
appeal to children. Brand licensing is prevalent in childrens

programming, and the release of each new movie aimed at young

people is typically accompanied by a raft of product tie-ins. Following the release of the SpongeBob Squarepants movie in 2004, the
character name was associated with and used to promote numerous food products, and concurrently Burger King offered SpongeBob toys and watches at its restaurants (Linn & Golin, 2006).
Numerous brands use characters and celebrities in their promotions and on product packaging, and their presence is believed to
assist with generating brand identity and facilitating a brand-consumer relationship (Lawrence, 2003). This can be in the form of
brand licensed characters (such as SpongeBob Squarepants as
mentioned above); or brand equity characters which are created
for the sole purpose of promoting a product or brand (Garretson
& Niedrich, 2004). Many of these associations have been built up
over generations, for example Tony the Tiger has been the character for Kelloggs Frosties since 1951 (Lawrence, 2003). Celebrity
endorsements are also used in order to link a brand to a certain
age group or fan base (IOM, 2005). In the UK, former International
footballer Gary Lineker, now a TV sports presenter, has been
endorsing the promotional campaign for Walkers Crisps since
1995, during which time the brand won an award for being the
consumers favourite in the food and drink category (British
Broadcasting Association, 2004).
Product placement in television programming, such as the
appearance of Coca-Cola in each episode of American Idol, is one
of many contentious branding activities but is effective in ensuring
that children are exposed to brands in as many situations as possible. There are also several other branding avenues used to reach
child and adolescent audiences such as internet advergaming
(Pempek & Calvert, 2009), viral marketing, product, programme
and event sponsorship, mobile phone advertising, advertising
within schools and point-of-sale marketing (Lindstrom, 2004) so
that both the frequency and intensity of childrens exposure to
branding messages is unprecedented (Linn, 2004).
In response to such ubiquitous branding activity, brand loyalty
can be established by two or three years of age. Before they are
even able to read, some children have already begun to make requests specically for named branded products (Escalante de Cruz
et al., 2004). It has been suggested that exposure to a brand early in
childhood in particular is critical for the creation of emotional
attachments and the solidication of the relationship with that
brand (LaTour, LaTour, & Zinkhan, 2010). Brand relationships
formed by children early in life are thought to be more imbedded
than those formed later (Ji, 2002). The brand of an item has been
stated as one of six key factors that drive childrens purchasing
decisions, alongside fun, taste, peer-pressure, status and packaging
(BHF, 2008).
Findings from our own research have indicated that following
food advert exposure, correct recall of adverts is signicantly related to the subsequent number of food items selected (Halford
et al., 2008a). Furthermore, it was found that obese children correctly recognised a greater number of food adverts than normal
weight children, and this recognition was positively correlated with
the amount of food consumed subsequently (Halford, Gillespie,
Brown, Pontin, & Dovey, 2004). Additionally, recognition of food adverts was related to BMI in 57 year old children (Halford, Boyland,
Hughes, Oliveira, & Dovey, 2007) which is supportive of other
studies linking brand recognition and weight status (Arredondo,
Castaneda, Elder, Slymen, & Dozier, 2009). The term recognition
in this context, as distinct from recall, refers to a childs ability to
select the correct option from a number of visual cues provided.
Celebrity endorsements are effective at increasing childrens
preferences for the product being promoted (Erdogan, 1999; Ross
et al., 1984). Furthermore, the association of known and liked
brand characters with a food has been shown to inuence the
likelihood of children agreeing to eat that food, and increased

Please cite this article in press as: Boyland, E. J., & Halford, J. C. G. Television advertising and branding: Effects on eating behaviour and food preferences in
children. Appetite (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.01.032

E.J. Boyland, J.C.G. Halford / Appetite xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Fig. 2. Mean (SEM, indicated by the error bars) number of branded and non-branded items selected from a food preference measure in each condition according to
macronutrient category (from Boyland et al., 2011a). aP < .01, bP < .001, indicate a signicantly greater number of items selected by high television (TV) viewers compared
with low television viewers.

willingness towards tasting a novel healthy food (Kotler, 2007). In

a recent study, children were signicantly more likely to prefer the
taste of and choose foods that featured popular cartoon characters
(such as Shrek and Dora the Explorer) compared to the same foods
without the characters demonstrating for the rst time, the effect
of licensed characters on taste preference and product choice (Roberto, Baik, Harris, & Brownell, 2010).
Food manufacturers spend substantial sums of money on advertising campaigns to promote sales (Henderson & Kelly, 2005) in the
belief that exposure to advertising affects behaviour. There is considerable evidence that food preferences and eating behaviour are
modied by food advert exposure and branding.
Advertising impacts on childrens food preferences
The term food preference in this context refers to stated preferences, i.e. childrens responses when asked about their food
likes after stimuli exposure, whereas food intake (discussed in
the next section) reects revealed preferences, i.e. what is observed as a result of real decisions on food.
Using a food preference checklist that was rst described by
Blundell and Rogers (1980), Halford et al. (2008a) demonstrated
that television food advertisement exposure can produce an obesogenic food preference response in normal weight children that is
typically found in overweight and obese children. Children who
habitually watch more television are also more susceptible to the
effects of television food advertising, showing an enhanced preference (particularly for branded foods) following food advert exposure compared to children who watch less television (Boyland
et al., 2011a) (see Fig. 2).
Furthermore, Borzekowski & Robinsons (2001) much cited randomized, controlled trial showed that children who saw a videotape with embedded food commercials were signicantly more
likely to select the advertised product than children who had not
seen the commercials. Robinson, Borzekowski, Matheson, &
Kraemer 2007 also reported that children preferred the taste of
food and drink items displaying the McDonalds branded packaging
to identical products in matched, but unbranded, packaging. This
was true even of items that were not available for purchase at
McDonalds at the time, such as carrot sticks.

intake in all children (see Fig. 3). This nding was later replicated
in 57 year old children (Halford et al., 2007) (see Fig. 4). Interestingly, a further study demonstrated that not only did food
advertising exposure produce a substantial and signicant increase
in caloric intake (of high fat and/or sweet energy-dense snacks) in
all children, but also that this increase in intake was largest in the
obese children (Halford et al., 2008b). This suggests that overweight and obese children are more responsive to food promotion,
and that such promotion specically stimulated the intake of energy-dense snacks (Halford et al., 2008b). It is important to note
that the foods offered to children taking part in these studies were
not the same items that were represented in the food adverts they
were exposed to. Therefore the effect of food advertising is not limited to increasing intake of the particular item being advertised;
rather it is a beyond-brand effect stimulating the consumption of
all snack foods on offer.
However, advertisements for healthier food products have also
been shown to have an impact. Both Dixon, Scully, Wakeeld,
White, & Crawford (2007) and Beaudoin, Fernandez, Wall, & Farley
(2007) found that adverts for nutritious foods promoted positive
attitudes and beliefs concerning these foods. However, personality
traits may be a selective barrier to childrens responsiveness to

Advertising impacts on childrens food intake

Using a within-participants paradigm in a cross-sectional
experimental study, Halford, Gillespie, Brown, Pontin, and Dovey
(2004) found that exposure to food advertising increased food

Fig. 3. The weight of food eaten after viewing advertisements by lean, overweight
and obese groups in the session with non-food ads (open columns) and in the
session with food ads (lled columns); mean values with SE bars; (from Halford
et al., 2004).

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E.J. Boyland, J.C.G. Halford / Appetite xxx (2012) xxxxxx

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Fig. 4. The mean (SE) amount of food eaten by the normal weight children and the
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Conclusion
In conclusion, children are exposed to extensive marketing
activity through a variety of media and non-broadcast sources at
all stages of their development. Its impact is readily demonstrated
by their brand recognition, and its inuence on eating behaviour
(total intake and food choice) has been robustly shown in a number of recent studies with a variety of experimental paradigms.
Whilst some regulation has been introduced in the UK to govern
the advertising of HFSS foods to try to reduce these impacts, question marks remain over the effectiveness of the rules in their current form. As it has been estimated that the number of
overweight children aged 311 years could be reduced by 18% with
a ban on HFSS food advertising (Chou, Rashad, & Grossman, 2008),
it seems that an opportunity is being missed by the UK and other
countries to make a clear and decisive step towards protecting
the health of our young people from ubiquitous and irresponsible
food marketing.
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children. Appetite (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.01.032