Walmart has a new ad campaign that I don’t admire. The theme of the campaign is that they sell ice cream for such a low cost, that you can serve it to your children whenever you want. Even to celebrate “today, the holiday called Tuesday.”
In other words, if you don’t buy your children ice cream regularly, you are being penny pinching. Don’t neglect the kids–buy them ice cream.
What about the parents like me who don’t think children should have ice cream on a daily or even weekly basis? Not because of cost, but because of health. With childhood obesity the number one concern for most pediatricians, I’m not comfortable with Walmart’s pitch.
Marketing is a powerful medium. The messages that we marketers create and promote can be very persuasive. As marketers, we need to follow our own moral standards and ethics. As consumers, we all need to objectively assess the marketing barrage that is the 21st century, and vet the validity of the messages for ourselves.
As a consumer, I’m not buying Walmart’s guilt campaign. And I feel bad for lower income parents who might feel worse about themselves as a result of this messaging. As a marketer, I’m uncomfortable they would sidestep a major national health issue in favor of revenue. Even popsicles would have been a better option than ice cream, but squirt guns, watermelon and sunscreen are all evocative of summer family fun that would aslo have worked. They are just not as expensive or as unhealthy as ice cream.
Fattening American children to fatten their own wallets. Does it outrage you?
By the way, I’m not the first one to comment on the ethics of Walmart and ice cream: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/wal-mart-serves-free-ice_b_209335.html
Visionary Thinking 