Can Cinderella and Elsa convince kids to eat vegetables?
It’s come to this, America: Disney-branded fruits and vegetables.
Dole Food Co. recently said it is partnering with the entertainment giant to market fresh produce to children across the country. Characters from Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar will now help hawk blueberries, bananas and broccoli.
Disney and Dole have a shared mission of providing high quality produce to help families lead healthier lives,” Josh Silverman, executive vice president of global licensing at Disney, said in a statement.
The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal, or whether Disney-branded produce will be priced higher than non-branded fruits and vegetables when they hit grocery shelves beginning next month.
L ast year, Disney partnered with Sage Fruit Co. for a similar campaign to promote the movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Darth Vader helped market bags of apples, while Yoda hawked green grapes.
Using well-known characters to sell nutrition is nothing new. Popeye the Sailor famously convinced kids to eat spinach, while generations have grown up chewing Flintstones vit amins. In the 1990s, hundreds of dairy-mustached celebrities helped revive milk’s popularity with the “Got Milk?” advertising campaign.
It’s not diffifficult to slap a character on a food and get kids to love it,” said Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert. “But these days, anybody who tries to sell anything to kids also has to appeal to the parents. This is a way for Disney to prove to mom and dad: See? We care about the health of your kids.” That’s difffffffffffferent from the way items were marketed in the 1970s and ’80s, Frankel said. Back then, advertisers were focused squarely on appealing to children. General Mills, for example, marketed its popular line of sugar-laden cereals with characters like Franken Berry and Count Chocula, while Pillsbury used car- toon fifigures Goofy Grape, Lefty Lemonade and FreckleFaced Strawberry to promote its line of Funny Face powdered drinks.
“It was all about the ‘nag factor,’” Frankel said. If companies sold the kids on it, eventually they’d whine and beg enough that mom and dad would buy it.”
But that began to change in the 1990s, he said, as baby boomers took a more handson approach to parenting. “All these helicopter parents needed to be told, ‘Mom and dad, here’s the best thing for your kid,’” Frankel said.
As a result, companies shifted their marketing tactics to appeal to parents. They began adding phrases like “all natural” and “no sugar” to their labels, and emphasized health-related benefifits. Disney’s partnership with Dole is a step even further in that direc tion, Frankel said.
“Now they can get you f ro m b o t h s i d e s , ” F r a n kel said. “The kid is happy because it’s got a Disney princess on it, and mom feels good because she’s buying a vegetable.”