Every year, in Mexico, the consumption of sugary drinks causes around 230 thousand new cases of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. One in every two Mexicans born since 2010 will develop diabetes throughout their lives. Mexico is the country with the highest consumption of Coca-Cola in the world and, because of sugary drinks, it is also the country with the most new cases of diabetes. Addiction to sugary drinks and, especially, to Coca-Cola, begins at an early age, associating, through its multimillion-dollar advertising, the consumption of the drink with happiness, joy, family unity and festivities that have great symbolism in childhood, such as Christmas.
The World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Diabetes Federation, the World Obesity Federation, the World Cancer Research Fund, as well as all national and international institutions specialized in nutrition and public health, independent and free of conflict of interest, recommend prohibiting the advertising of these drinks that use elements attractive to children.
In this collaboration we demonstrate that Coca-Cola’s Christmas caravans are violating, openly and publicly, laws that protect the health of the population and vulnerable consumers. They violate the provisions of the Regulations of the General Health Law on Advertising, which prohibits using elements and characters attractive to children to promote unhealthy products; as well as violate the provisions of the Federal Consumer Protection Law, being misleading and abusive advertising that contains artificial and exaggerated information, among other characteristics that take advantage of the vulnerability of girls and boys.
Due to the above, and based on sufficient and solidly supported evidence, we present complaints against these events before the Federal Commission for the Protection against Health Risks, the Federal Consumer Prosecutor’s Office, the Government of Mexico City, various municipalities and state human rights commissions, as well as before the CNDH itself.
The soft drink companies themselves committed, more than 20 years ago, to the World Health Organization on a global level and to the Ministry of Health on a national level, not to advertise their unhealthy products to children under 12 years of age. A long list of nations prohibits this type of advertising, recognizing that girls and boys are deeply vulnerable to advertising, very easily manipulated and attracted to the consumption of unhealthy products.
The analyzes carried out by experts and presented to the authorities recognize the Coca-Cola Christmas Caravans as one of the most persuasive and effective expressions of promoting the consumption of an unhealthy drink among children.
First of all, it must be noted that the best advertising is the one that, for a large audience, goes unnoticed as such; The best advertising is the one that manages to appropriate traditional cultural events; The best advertising is the one that links the brand and the product to positive emotions, feelings, desires and causes. The most effective is the one that manages to disguise itself with positive values to dress its product in them, hiding its reality.
And, on the other hand, the most persuasive tool with childhood is the use of characters that are attractive to girls and boys, that generate an emotional reaction and that contain great symbolism. The Coca-Cola Christmas caravan has them. What character is more symbolic and loved by boys and girls than Santa Claus? What characters can awaken the affections of girls and boys like the anthropomorphism of Coca-Cola bears, representing families?
What cultural event in Western society has greater positive symbols and values than Christmas? Peace, love, family, union, celebration; even a time in which truces are promoted in war conflicts. In 1914, during the First World War, a Christmas truce was agreed upon in which German and British soldiers played a game of soccer and shared food. A date on which the Pope calls for peace and conciliation.
Appropriating this celebration through a brand of a product that is linked to the biggest pandemic we are experiencing, that of diabetes, has a profound impact on the population in general, which fills the brand and the product with tinsel, and allows us to capture the imagination of childhood, associating the celebration with the product.
Associating the brand and the product with all these elements, appropriating the representation of Christmas, as the company did with the image of Santa Claus, normalizes and gives value to the consumption of this product. Christmas now has a brand, and that brand is linked to the main disease that we suffer in Mexico.
In our hyperconsumption society, flooded with advertising, awareness of the power of advertising that permanently floods us through all media is absent. Its power over us and its greater penetration into childhood is not recognized. Hundreds and thousands of studies have shown how advertising impacts consumer decisions, how it impacts, through very diverse strategies, the deterioration of eating habits from an early age.
It cannot be said that there is a health policy in our country, that there is a policy to protect the most vulnerable consumers, allowing the development of these Coca-Cola Caravans. Important steps have been taken aimed at reducing the consumption of these products, which are the main cause of diabetes in our country, and part of these policies must be the application of the law that prohibits this type of advertising directed, mainly at children. And this must be a priority in Mexico, which has the highest consumption of this product in the world and where it is projected that 1 in every 2 girls and boys will develop diabetes throughout their lives.