Coca-Cola broadened its pledges to provide more calorie information to consumers and to stop advertising to children around the world, but the media was quick to scour the fine print of the company's promises as the beverage leader tries to win over consumers. 

CEO Muhtar Kent announced on Wednesday, the brand's 127th anniversary, that the company was taking a four-pronged approach to battling obesity, an issue that it has acknowledged lately in many ways but at the same time has attempted to deflect blame from its iconic sugary sodas.

As part of an initiative it's calling Coming Together, Coca-Cola wants to communicate that it's part of the solution, not the problem. The beverage giant and its local partners will label all packages with calorie details on the front, expand the availability of low- and no-calorie beverages in every market, support more physical activity programs, and stop advertising to children under 12.Continue reading...

The Tokyo Newspaper, aka Tokyo Shimbun, and Dentsu Tokyo have created an augmented reality app that "translates" stories from the newspaper into a child-friendly format. Replete with cartoon-character commentary on stories, headlines (pop-ups) and child-friendly text, the app makes it easier for children to understand what's on the printed page.

The app, which was chosen recently by Ad Age as a Creativity Pick of the Day, provides opportunities for advertisers as well. Companies like yogurt-maker Meiji are placing interactive ads in the paper targeting children and their parents.

The move comes as newspapers worldwide search for new ways to sustain their printed product as readers, especially young ones, become accustomed to receiving their news in the digital space. But while the focus tends to be on attracting millennials and others crucial to the papers' survival, recruiting even younger readers is also a part of other newspapers' efforts.Continue reading...

Tesco made headlines a year ago when its HomePlus retail subsidiary in South Korea tested a virtual store in a Seoul subway station, showcasing items that could be scanned and ordered by smartphone for home delivery, while Peapod is testing virtual grocery shopping in the U.S.

Now Walmart is testing a similar idea in Toronto in partnership with Mattel. The retail and toy giants are teaming up on what's described as Canada's first pop-up virtual toy store, enabling QR code-based shopping of Mattel brands — including hot toys from Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends brands — to holiday shoppers.

The pop-up is located in the city's massive PATH underground walkway, a retail concouse that connects downtown buildings and and an array of businesses to Toronto's Union Station rail commuter hub. It may find a ready pool of virtual shoppers, as it will run for four weeks in the same location where Wells.ca tested a QR-enabled store in April.Continue reading...

While fast-food chains are responding to nutritional criticism by enhancing their kids menus, American children appear less and less interested in what they're peddling. NPD Group calculated that visits to fast-food restaurants in which kids meals were purchased have declined every year since 2007 and fell by 5 percent last year from 2010.

It's not that parents don't want healthier fare to their children when they eat out. In the U.S., analysts are suggesting that the notion of kids' meals is becoming increasingly outdated as family eating patterns change. And for that reason, they say, even sales of McDonald's iconic Happy Meal might be only flat these days at best — and at a chain whose other product lines are growing robustly, that's not good performance.

One factor, for example, is tight budgets that continue to afflict many American households — especially fast-food consumers — at a time of high unemployment and continued economic uncertainty. Mothers have "probably switched to the value menu because it was cheaper than the kids meal" at many chains, Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant-industry analyst, told the Chicago Tribune.

It also appears that kids are becoming disenchanted with the licensed toys packaged in the meals, at a younger and younger age, dropping from age 12 to eight. Blame digital entertainment, cell phones, and other rivals for kids' attention. But all of that apparently doesn't hold true in the UK, where McDonald's is using the revamped Happy Meal as a marketing hook to win over parents (via their kids) around its London 2012 Olympics sponsorship.Continue reading...

Barbie’s lived high on the hog for generations now, riding around in her own beach buggy, horse and carriage, private jet, Vespa. When she hasn’t been traveling in style, she’s been hanging out by the pool or in her three-story, pinkariffic dream townhouse.

But she may need to put away her fancy dresses and modes of transport for the time being, roll up her sleeves, and get her well-manicured fingers to work. (To that point, she's now making another run at the White House with a presidential glampaign.) 

In the first three months of this year, for the first time in 10 quarters, sales of Barbie products went down for Mattel, which directly hurt the company’s bottom line, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Part of the explanation: Toys “R” Us and Walmart cut back on Barbie products in the first quarter, and a few other Mattel lines, such as Hot Wheels, Cars, and Fisher-Price, didn’t do so well, either.Continue reading...

When Boomers were kids, playing in the stream meant just that. But now, it refers to a generation of kids “with the average preschooler now more able to play video games than ride a bike or tie a shoe, and with three-quarters of all middle school- and high school-age kids already owning a phone.”

So when, how much and from whom should our kids be learning about digital technology? After all, we can't leave it all up to Salman Khan.

Sara DeWitt, VP of PBS Kids Interactive, believes the transmedia approach to learning works best with kids today and comments on the ease of touchscreen technology in this video from SXSW 2012: "How Kids Learn With Technology."Continue reading...

McDonald's announced a cross-country "listening tour" last August, a local market effort to get feedback in local markets about its nutritional messaging.

Above, watch a recent session led by Dr. Cynthia Goody, McDonald's USA director of nutrition, who spoke with a group of parents, educators, PTA members and local community organization members in the greater Washington, D.C. area about the company's commitment to improved nutrition choices and children's well-being. And yes, Ronald was there.

The video was released as new research indicates that McDonald's customers were the "unhappiest" with their health last month out of the eight top U.S. fast food chains.Continue reading...

Americans are hate eating McDonald's.

Sales are up. Volume is up. More billions have been served. But Ad Age reports that internal tracking from "people close to the company" show that "McDonald's consistently ranks near the bottom in quality perception when compared with rivals." It seems that, like its food, McDonald's is rotting from the inside.

And it should be no surprise. Quietly, in store isles and book clubs, at churches and school bus stops, Americans are beginning to worry about their food.Continue reading...