Priorities

PRIORITIES / Responsible Advertising

We perform a hardwork on these areas:

Responsible Advertising

Improving the way we advertise our products

Savoury snack manufacturers believe in the value of commercial communication and advertise their products for competitive reasons: to promote new product developments or features including healthier options, abiding by European and national advertising regulation and codes.

Our members support the critical reflection of their marketing communications and acknowledge that children need to learn how to understand and assess them. We take up our responsibility as advertisers and have endorsed guidelines on commercial communication and vending, support initiatives to develop and spread responsible advertising practices.

As Europe’s only trade association ESA has endorsed the EU Pledge commitments to change food and beverage advertising to children in the EU. By changing savoury snack food advertising to children, we aim at supporting parental efforts to promote healthier snacking choices and balanced lifestyles among children.

ESA recommends that member companies:

• do not advertise their products to children under 13 years of age on TV, print, radio, cinema and online (including social media and other online platforms and sites, including company-owned websites and video-sharing platforms such as YouTube) at all, or only products which fulfil the EU Pledge common nutrition criteria or criteria based on accepted scientific evidence and/or applicable national and international dietary guidelines.

• do not engage in any commercial communications related to savoury snack products in primary schools, except where specifically requested by or agreed with the school administration for educational purposes.

Companies participating in the ESA Advertising Pledge must all meet the EU Pledge commitments and can also go beyond. Several ESA members have signed either the ESA Pledge or are direct members of the EU Pledge and together, these companies represent the bulk of advertising expenditure in the European savoury snacks market. ESA will continue to encourage all its members to commit to the EU Pledge.