CARU Recommends Kraft Modify TV Ad that Doesn’t Adequately Depict Adult Supervision; Company Agrees to Do So

New York, NY –  Dec. 17, 2015  – The Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CARU) has recommended that Kraft Food Group, Inc., modify broadcast advertising for the company’s “Capri Sun Roarin’ Waters” beverage that doesn’t depict adult supervision of children in a swimming pool.

CARU is an investigative unit of the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation. It is administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

The advertising at issue came to the attention of CARU through CARU’s routine monitoring practices.

In this case, the commercial featured children engaged in imaginative but mildly risky play, including jumping on a short narrow concrete wall, balancing on a surfboard, running and sliding on a wet tarp and swatting a launched teddy bear with a tennis racket. The advertisement also included a segment showing children playing in a pool without adult supervision.

CARU has long held that swimming is an activity that poses a potential safety risk for children and has required that advertisers visually depict adult supervision when featuring images of children in activities involving water, whether in a swimming pool, at the beach, or on a water slide in a back yard.

The advertiser contended that that adult supervision was adequately depicted through a video super. CARU did not agree and noted in its decision that while it appreciated the fact that the advertiser represented children engaged in healthy physical activity in a fun and fast-paced advertisement, if an activity cannot be represented in a way that promotes safety, it should not be represented at all.

The company, in its advertiser’s statement, said that it disagreed “with CARU’s position related to adult supervision of swimming children in our commercial. Nevertheless, we have agreed to remove the pool scene from our commercial for the remainder of its scheduled run.”