Wednesday 4 January 2012

Do large companies have a responsibility to not be seen to be promoting formula feeding?


I recently stumbled upon a sleep-suit with the slogan "save water drink milk" accompanied by an image depicting a babies bottle on the NEXT website, actually I saw it first on another blog promoting the new NEXT spring summer collection (a kind of preview).  I wrote to NEXT at the time to share my opinion.  Now don't get me wrong there is absolutely nothing wrong with the slogan, it is the slogan accompanied by the image that gets my back up.  

While having a grumble on my personal Facebook page a friend left me a comment stating the irony of artificial milk being made from water and also reminding me (I had stupidly forgotten) that it is infact illegal to promote formula feeding for babies under 6 months.  This sleepsuit is available in First size upwards...  Another argument, and a pretty valid one, put forward was that expressed breast milk can be given via a bottle but that certainly isn't the perception of the "majority" of people when looking at such an image.

I do think most people would not be influenced by such imagery BUT at the same time I do think large companies do need to sit up and take some responsibility. 

2 comments:

  1. They did.  Response is as follows:

    "Thank
    you for taking the time and trouble to contact us about the sleepsuit you saw
    online, and I'm very sorry to hear how upset you were with the
    design.
     
    Just
    to reassure you, when phrases are used in the design of our Childrenswear items,
    we take extra care to ensure they strike just the right note in terms of content
    and tone. In this case, the wording on the sleepsuit is meant to be a
    light-hearted slogan playing on the fact that babies like drinking milk,
    symbolised by the picture of a bottle. There was never any intention to send any
    kind of message about bottle-feeding"Missing the point slightly I think...

    ReplyDelete

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