Last week, there were a number of
news articles about a GP from Scotland who spoke out against the Bounty packs
handed out in hospitals during pregnancy and to women who have just given
birth, accompanied with an attempt to photograph your baby and then sell you
the photos. This is just one aspect of advertising to pregnant ladies and new
mums that I despise.
Here’s an article about the Bounty
packs:
and here’s an opinion piece in the
Scotsman:
I was astonished to find out that HMRC
pay Bounty £90,000 a year to distribute child benefit forms in their packs when
you can get these forms online, at tax offices or posted out to you! I refused
to take the pack or let the 'Bounty Lady' speak to me after Daniel was born, and
she tried to explain that this was how I got the child benefit forms. I argued
back that it wasn’t and I could get it myself, she then admitted that she wasn’t
the only way you could get them, but I’m sure many people gave their personal
information in order to receive a form they could get elsewhere. I have heard of many women being asked questions by the lady
and they gave this information assuming she was a medic/nurse (after all, who
else is allowed to wander around post-natal wards freely, the majority of
hospitals barely allow the partners to stay more than an hour or two after
giving birth) only to find themselves the recipient of many items of junk mail.
This junk mail includes free bottles, another way to promote formula, and vouchers for baby food
and disposable nappies. I think it is awful that the NHS allow women in the
immediate post-partum period to be exploited in this way. Throughout pregnancy,
women are given official sounding documents such as the ‘pregnancy information
folder’ from Bounty or ‘Emma’s Diary’ (which was actually given to me at an
ante-natal appointment at my GP) but these are full of advertising from formula
and baby food companies. The Cow and Gate weaning program is widely advertised,
and so called ‘follow-on’ formula milk (a separate milk introduced by formula
companies to get around the formula milk advertising ban – I expand on this
below) litters many of the pages. I read an article in the Guardian which
stated Emma’s Diary – handed out by NHS staff to pregnant women – has only 25 pages of medical information but 119
pages of advertising.
We live in a commercialised
world, I get it, but I just hate this type of advertising. I hate the faux ‘we’re
not advertising, we want the best for you’ kind of advertising even more. Like
the Dove adverts which celebrate women looking the way they are, but then say
you need to buy their beauty products. I might add that the fact that Unilever
also own Lynx and Slim-Fast adds more irony to the campaign.
People often assume
that the norm is the only way just because advertising has soaked their
mindset, like using disposable nappies. My biggest gripes with the targeting of
pregnant ladies and new mums are with the infant formula milk and baby food
advertising. When the advertising ban on formula milk was introduced, it
didn't cover this so called ‘follow-on’ formula – milk for a baby over 6 months
old. If people have decided not to breastfeed, the formula milk they use at
birth can be used through to age 1 when a baby then would switch to cow’s milk,
i.e. there is no need for ‘follow-on’ milk. These ‘follow-on’ milks were
created and packaged the same as formulas from birth and then could be
advertised. Companies need to mention that breastfeeding is preferable, but do this
with an undertone that suggests you probably wouldn’t breastfeed past a few
months, or implying that the baby is healthier when you move on to formula by
brightening the colours when the baby is formula fed (the complete opposite of
all the scientific research). I’m sure this would make a great study for school
pupils to do on advertising, if any teachers are reading this!
The presence of Bounty in hospital wards is another example
of companies waging far too much power and playing on the vulnerability of new
mothers, many of whom are tired after hours (if not days) of labour, and
drugged and therefore not capable of deciding who gets to have their personal
information. We would be shocked if other people in hospitals were allowed to
be accessed by big companies while in bed to get personal information for
targeted advertising, but for some reason there just isn’t much interest in
stopping the Bounty ladies from harassing new mums. I hope this recent news
coverage helps change things in future.
**update** I wrote this blog last week and yesterday Mumsnet launched their campaign to ban sales reps in maternity wards using the hash tag #bountymutiny I am glad to see Mumsnet are calling for this practice to change and that many news websites have covered this campaign today including the BBC:
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