Promotion of Food and Beverages by German-Speaking Influencers Popular with Adolescents on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram

Abstract

The promotion of nutritionally poor food and beverages (F&B) has a proven effect on children’s eating preferences and, therefore, plays a significant role in today’s childhood obesity epidemic. This study’s objective was to assess the prevalence (exposure) and context (power) of the F&B cues in influencer content across three platforms: TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The selected influencers were popular with adolescents, with a combined total of more than 34 million followers/subscribers. We employed the YouTube Influencer Marketing Protocol from the World Health Organization (WHO) as our basis for coding. We analysed a total of 360 videos/posts and, of these, 24% contained F&B cues, which is equivalent to 18.1 F&B cues/hour. In total, 77% of the cues were not permitted for children’s advertising, according to WHO criteria, and this was stable across all platforms, with chocolate and sugary confectionery (23%) as the most frequently featured products. Not-permitted F&B had a four-times higher chance of being branded, a five-times higher chance of being described positively, and received significantly more ‘likes’. In 62% of the analysed presentations, the branded product was mentioned, yet only 6% of the content was labelled as advertising. The present analysis delivers further grounds for discussion for policies and regulations of influencer marketing.