Understanding Marketing, Products & Services Through a Child Rights Lens

Understanding Marketing, Products & Services Through a Child Rights Lens

Welcome To ActionLab One. Our focus topic today: Impacts of products and services on children seen through a due diligence and social impact lens. Let’s break down our talking points.

The issue

Across society, there are growing concerns over the health impacts of what we consume. Children are especially vulnerable, and both malnutrition and obesity are on the rise.

The benchmark findings

Global Child Forum’s latest benchmark contains results from 297 companies in Food Production, Food Retail, and Personal and Household Products.

• None of the companies report on consulting children or their representatives in stakeholder engagement processes
• Just 15% report impact on children from products or marketing as a material topic
• Only 9% disclose a product responsibility policy even mentioning children

What do you make of these numbers?

The call to action

Children today are not sufficiently considered as stakeholders by business in relation to products and marketing. Downstream social impact will be increasingly important to understand and address for companies in the consumer goods industry.

We call upon companies to act. Businesses must engage children as stakeholders – it’s time to listen up. Let’s get started!