Columbia foundation airing healthy drink TV ads

Campaign calls on Coca-Cola to do more to tackle obesity

The Horizon Foundation, a Columbia-based organization that has targeted sugary drinks in its advocacy of healthy lifestyles, has launched a television ad campaign calling on Coca-Cola to do more to help fight childhood obesity.

The $40,000 campaign, which will run through November, will hit broadcast and cable channels in the Baltimore area with 30and 90-second advertisements bearing the message: “Happiness doesn’t come in a red can. Obesity does.”

The ads feature people persuading others to swap their sugary drinks for healthier options.

The campaign was announced Oct. 22 by the foundation and its partners, including MedChi (the Maryland State Medical Society), the American Heart Association and People Acting Together in Howard.

“While Coca-Cola produces scores of healthy beverages, it spends over two-thirds of its marketing budget promoting sugary drinks,” said Horizon Foundation President and CEO Nikki Highsmith Vernick. “We’re asking Coke, and all other beverage companies, to work with us — not against us — and invest in the long-term health of their customers by promoting their better, healthier beverages.”

“Coke is the industry leader,” said the Rev. Robert Turner, co-chairman of PATH. “It can find a better way. Coke can redeem itself. So today, the faith community asks Coca-Cola to flip its advertising and promote drinks that are healthier for children and their families.”

Rhona Applebaum, vice president and chief science and health officer for the Coca-Cola Co., said in a letter to The Baltimore Sun that the federal Centers for Disease Control reports that people consume more sugar from foods than from beverages. Applebaum noted CocaCola offers more than 180 diet and light beverages in the United States, and, starting in 2006, began providing only low- and nocalorie beverages to schools as part of an industry-wide focus.

“Today, 90 percent fewer calories are shipped to schools nationally,” Applebaum wrote. “This is an extension of our 60-year long commitment to not advertise to children under the age of 12.”

Ellen Valentino, executive vice president of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Beverage Association, defended soft drinks, and said in a statement that, “You can be healthy and enjoy a soft drink as part of a balanced lifestyle.

“We look at this as a missed opportunity,” Valentino said of the Horizon campaign. “Singling out one product is clearly the wrong message to send.”

The television ads will also promote the foundation’s Howard County Unsweetened initiative, a public awareness campaign about sugary beverages, and the Better Beverage Finder, an online tool designed to help people find low- or no-sugar drinks.

Brian Alvin, immediate past president of MedChi, said for the health care community to promote healthier choices in schools and communities, “we need to educate the public and obtain the cooperation and support from corporate America.”

The doctors of Maryland, Alvin said, are giving beverage companies like Coca-Cola a “prescription for change.”

“Change your current marketing approach,” he said.