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13th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications
Ljubljana, April 24-26, 2008
Normative perils and promises of food health branding
Working paper
Thomas Boysen Anker
Philosophy Section
Faculty of Humanities
University of Copenhagen
Njalsgade 80
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Phone: (+45) 35 32 81 00
Email: [email protected]
This paper is part of the interdisciplinary research project Health Branding, funded by The Danish Strategic Research
Council. The Health Branding Project consists of an interdisciplinary research group (sociologists, management
theorists and practitioners, ethicists and business representatives) that conducts both theoretical and empirical
research on the overall theme: developing ethically acceptable models for effective branding of food products on the
value of health.
Normative perils and promises of food health branding
Working paper
Aim. On the background of a distinction between convergent and divergent health branding I identify and describe
the main positive and negative normative impact of divergent food health branding, that is by far the one with the
potentially most offensive and supportive consequences.
Convergent and divergent branding. Convergent health branding attempts to induce a desire for a product by
triggering the consumer’s actual health values and make her associate these values to the product or organization.
Divergent health branding attempts to induce a desire for a product by creating or transforming health values in the
mind of the consumer and make her associate those new or transformed values with the product or organization.
Thus, convergent health branding addresses the consumer as she is, whereas divergent health branding tries to
change the consumer’s identity by transforming her web of health-beliefs and health-desires. By analysis of brand
campaigns I show that both types of branding are commonplace. The two most common kinds of divergent health
branding are: 1) Changing consumers’ believes about what physiological and mental states that count as healthy and
what factors influence health, 2) changing consumers’ believes about what products are healthy. We describe four
main problems that are instances of 1) and/or 2).
Negative normative impact. The point of departure for the normative discussion is an analysis of an actual
paradigm case for each of the following problems.
 Pathologizing: Health branding, based on products’ alleged preventive or curing features, that blurs the
distinction between normal and abnormal behavior in order to expand the consumers conception of
abnormal behavior. This type of branding is in danger of distorting the consumers feeling of and belief in
personal health (Moynihan and Cassels 2005).
 Deceitful re-conceptualizations: Health branding that intentionally tries to (i) change the target group’s
belief that a specific food type is unhealthy and (ii) induce the false belief that a specific unhealthy product
as a matter of fact is healthy. The normative problem is the causation of a nutritiously deteriorated pattern of
consumption (Committee on food marketing 2006).
 Stereotyping: Health branding that transforms health values into super values that the average consumer
cannot approach. Stereotyping may cause low self-esteem to the extent that consumers view commercially
constructed values as regulative ideals (Maine and Kelly 2005).
 Individualizing health factors: Health branding that ignores genetic, structural and social determinants of
health and conceptualizes health as a set of conditions that is primarily dependent on the personal will and
choice of the consumer. Here, the primary normative problem is stigmatization of overweight and obesity
and what has been termed as ‘health stress’ (Ogden 2003).
Positive normative impact. I unfold two significant normative potentials of commercial food health branding.
 Re-framing healthy choices: Public health promotion in relation to lifestyle diseases has failed (lifestyle
diseases are still on the rise). The main reason is an overemphasized belief in humans’ willingness and
ability to base health behavior on factual information. Commercial health branding (of nutritious products)
offers a great opportunity to promote public health, because it transforms the healthy choice from a science
based factual choice that ought to be done for objective reasons, into a desire based choice done for
subjective reasons.
 Reinforcing the cultural value of health: Cultural values are important drivers in public health. On the
empirically supported assumption that health branding has considerable power to change and create cultural
values, health branding based on a reasonable understanding of human health may contribute significantly
to reinforce the cultural value of health and thereby indirectly promote healthy lifestyle choices.
References
Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth, Food and Nutrition Board, Board on Children,
Youth, and Families (USA). 2006. Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? J. M.
McGinnis, J. Appleton Gootman, V. I. Kraak (eds.).
Maine, M., and J. Kelly. 2005. The body myth: adult women and the pressure to be perfect. John Wiley and Sons.
Moynihan, M., and A. Cassels. 2005. Selling sickness: how drug companies are turning us all into patients. Allen
and Unwin.
Ogden, J. 2003. The psychology of eating: from healthy to disordered behavior. Blackwell Publishing.