LONDON — The campaign against AIDS has its red ribbons. The movement against poverty has its white wristbands. And if the advertising industry has its way, the effort to curb obesity may soon get its own instantly recognizable symbol.
But then again, maybe not. The British government has made a big commitment to promoting the benefits of weight loss, the centerpiece of which is a three-year advertising campaign announced last month with a budget of £75 million ($146 million). But disagreements over the scope of the campaign — particularly over whether it is proper to let companies that make high-calorie and high-fat foods participate — have been clouding the effort before a single commercial (or logo) is made.
Everyone agrees on the problem: Nearly two-thirds of adults and about one-third of children in Britain are overweight or obese, health officials say. And advertising executives say they agree that in order to be effective, the antiobesity campaign needs to be broad-based and pervasive, perhaps along the lines of the recent antipoverty initiative that went under the name “ONE” in the United States and “Make Poverty History” in other countries. Millions of people bought white wristbands to signal their commitment to the movement.
But so far, the fat-fighting campaign is short on specifics and long on controversy. Like most public-sector advertising in Britain, the effort will be run by the Central Office of Information, a government agency that coordinates advertising assignments and the buying of media space and time. The office has yet to choose agencies for the account, but some definition for the campaign is expected by this summer.
Whether the campaign will use a logo as its signature is still up in the air. Several years ago, amid rising concern about obesity and about a possible backlash over the marketing of unhealthy food, London-based advertising agencies presented ideas to the government for an antiobesity logo, a sort of counterpart to the triangular symbol that is used internationally on recyclable materials.
Rather than referring directly to food or exercise, the three symbols that were proposed by different agencies aimed to convey a message of personal investment in a healthy lifestyle. The executives promoting the idea suggested that the logo could be applied to food packaging, Web sites or even soccer shirts in order to make the message resonate with children.
But the idea stalled, advertising executives say, because of disagreements over how the program should be run.
The government, for instance, wanted to be able to keep junk food brands from using the logo, but the food industry wanted to leave that decision to marketers. The logo would have appeared alongside a separate set of nutritional labels that are being phased in on British food packaging.
The lack of consensus about the logo started to look like a microcosm of the fight between the government, health groups and marketers over who should bear responsibility for the obesity problem, and what the proposed solution should be.
“If you just run some advertising and then forget about it, it’s going to have zero effect,” said Hamish Pringle, director general of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, a trade group that represents British advertising agencies. “If we’re seeing obesity as a societal problem, it could be a decade before it shows results.”
Last month, the government published a 56-page report on its proposed antiobesity strategy, which included plans to promote bicycle riding and require cooking lessons in schools. But the document provided few details on what kind of advertising it envisioned. Instead it somewhat nebulously called for an “evidence-based marketing program which will inform, support and empower parents in making changes to their children’s diet and levels of physical activity.”
One of the bigger points of contention is how the public service campaign can get its message across alongside ads for foods that help make people fat. Among the steps the government had been considering was a proposal by some doctors’ groups and other health organizations to ban all television advertising of foods high in fat, sugar or salt before 9 p.m.
British regulators last year had already barred ads for unhealthy foods from appearing during television programs aimed at children, and the move was seen as one of the strictest measures anywhere to restrict such advertising. But the ban created alarm in the television industry, where executives have said it was restricting financing for production of children’s television programs.
To the dismay of some food companies, European governments have been studying the British measures. The French health minister, Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, warned the food industry last week to take steps to limit junk-food advertising to children or face the threat of legislation.
Some companies have seen the writing on the wall and voluntarily pulled back from campaigns that might provoke controversy. Eleven big food marketers, among them Coca-Cola, Danone, Kellogg, Kraft, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever, in December agreed on a European plan to stop advertising of unhealthy food to children under 12 on television, in print and on the Internet.
Meanwhile, some antiobesity groups in Britain say not enough is being done.
Richard Watts, coordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign, said that the money the British government plans to spend on antiobesity ads will be a drop in the bucket compared with the amount the food industry will spend to advertise its products.
“It’s illogical to spend taxpayer money on anti-junk-food advertising while allowing significantly higher spending on contradicting that message,” he said.
As the dialogue continues over what the campaign should look like and what message it should impart, advertising executives say they are simply pleased to be considered part of the solution by the government.
“It’s using the positive power of advertising, which seems to be a bit of a sea change in how the government sees advertising,” said Jonathan Collett, a spokesman for the Advertising Association in London, a trade group for the advertising and marketing industries.
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