Farmers love cows: image campaign for young farmers or commercial message for dairy sales?
Posted: February 5, 2025 Filed under: Advertising, alternative protein, Authors, cultivated meat, Food | Tags: Advertizing Comments Off on Farmers love cows: image campaign for young farmers or commercial message for dairy sales?
The Dutch Dairy Organisation (NZO) launched a campaign starring young farmers. This initiative took shape through a website and a TV commercial. It was however not entirely clear if the primary purpose of this campaign was to boost the image of young farmers or to boost dairy sales. In a decision provided at the end of last year, the Appeal Board of the Dutch Advertising Code Committee (ACC) explains why transparency around sponsorship of a nonprofit campaign is necessary. It also clarifies when a party is considered a co-advertiser.
Website
Under the heading “farmers love cows”, the website states, among other things, “As young farmers of the Netherlands, we would like to tell people that we take good care of our animals. You can see that in these commercials.” The TV commercial is then shown, followed by the text: “What dairy cows want”. What follows is an enumeration of cows’ wishes with pictures: “being able to walk around freely”, “always having enough water and feed”, “milked with care”, “always having fresh air” and “chilling out”. Following this, under the heading “what our farmers do” are short stories from three farmers. At the bottom of the page, it is stated “This campaign was created with the support of the NZO”. The NZO logo is provided next to this announcement.
TV commercial
The TV commercial shows images of young farmers, working on the farm, and of dairy cows, both in the barn and in the meadow. The voice-over in the TV-commercial says: “We farmers take good care of our dairy cows. They can walk around if they want to. Brush themselves if they want to. Chill out if they want to. And eat and drink when they want. They are milked with care. And there is always fresh air. See, that makes them happy. And if the cow is happy, so am I. Farmers love cows. This is a message from the Dutch Young Farmers Association.” At the end of the television commercial, both the web address of the campaign and the logo of the Young Farmers Association is mentioned.
Message on behalf of whom?
Both the website and the TV commercial are displayed by the Dutch Young Farmers Association. This is an organisation that represents the interests of agricultural young people in The Hague and Brussels, with the aim of helping them with personal and business development. However, in the background, the NZO is also involved. The website states this in so many words. In the TV commercial, this appears indirectly, namely by reference to the website of the campaign. In first instance, the ACC did not consider NZO as a co-advertiser. Wrongly, according to the complainant, because NZO was in fact instrumental in the creation of this campaign.
Image campaign for young farmers or statement on behalf of NZO?
Advertising is a broad concept, covering not only the recommendation of products and services, but also of ideas. It makes a difference to consumers’ interpretation whether these ideas are proclaimed by an idealistic or a commercial organisation. Is this an idealistic campaign to boost the image of young farmers or a commercial expression by an organisation that aims to promote dairy production and marketing on behalf of its members? If there is no clarity on the involvement of NZO, this could be interpreted as a lack of essential information. This could potentially make this campaign misleading.
Misleading campaign?
To start with the latter, the Appeal Board distinguishes between the website and the TV commercial in its assessment of whether the campaign would be misleading. Indeed, the Appeal Board rules that consumers should be informed about the commercial aspect of the message. This should prevent consumers from putting the TV commercial in the wrong context, so that they will see it exclusively as an image campaign for young farmers. If the consumer does not recognise the underlying commercial interest of NZO, what is left is a romanticised image of how young farmers treat and love cows. And it is not unlikely this will boost sales of dairy products. The Appeal Board considers it plausible that the lack of information about the fact that the campaign is (partly) a commercial expression in the interest of the dairy sector may lead the average consumer to buy dairy products, which they would not have done otherwise. Information about this interest is therefore essential information for the average consumer.
Lack of “essential information”
Because the TV commercial omits information about the involvement of NZO or other information about the underlying commercial interest, there is a lack of essential information as referred to in article 8.3 of the Dutch Advertising Code (NRC). Like the ACC, the Appeal Board rules that the campaign is unfair for that reason within the meaning of Article 7 NRC. This finding is without prejudice to the right to freedom of expression by the Young Farmers Association and NZO. They are allowed to propagate a viewpoint regarding young farmers in the television commercial but must also comply with the requirement that no unfair advertising is made. Freedom of expression as guaranteed in Article 10(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights does not imply the freedom to engage in unfair advertising.
The NRC’s provisions on unfair advertising are a direct implementation of the corresponding provisions of Dutch statutory laws on this point. It thus concerns an exception to freedom of expression provided by law. Moreover, the restriction in this case relates exclusively to the disclosure of the underlying commercial interest and not to the idea itself. NZO and the Young Farmers Association therefore fail on this point as far as the TV commercial is concerned. This does not apply to the website. The Appeal Board rules on this point that the announcement that the campaign was created “with the support of NZO” makes it sufficiently clear that the dairy industry as such is involved in and supports this campaign.
NZO co-advertiser
The NZO is closely involved in the TV commercial, as it (i) financed the production thereof, (ii) registered the domain name of the campaign website and (iii) took care of the procurement of airtime of the TV commercial. As mentioned above, promotion of dairy products should be seen as the primary objective of the campaign. With NZO on the one hand enabling the campaign and on the other hand promoting its own commercial interest, the Appeal Board sees sufficient reason to consider NZO co-responsible for the content of the TV commercial. NZO actively helped the Young Farmers Association to advertise the dairy sector. This constitutes the promotion of dairy products by or on behalf of an advertiser, whether or not with the help of third parties as referred to in article 1 NRC. This gives the NZO its own responsibility to ensure that the campaign complies with the NRC, which it failed to do. That unfair advertising is made through the TV commercial is therefore partly attributed to NZO.
What can we learn from this decision?
This decision shows that it is perfectly permissible to convey an idealistic message by or on behalf of a commercial organisation. But it must be transparent who is proclaiming this message. This lesson applies equally to conventional and alternative dairy and meat products. If manufacturers of alternative proteins conduct an idealistic campaign in which they emphasize that manufacturing their products does not involve animal suffering, it must be clear who is sending this message. These are just the rules of fair advertising, which benefit to all of us. Just like alternative protein options.
Picture sourced from the website https://boerenhoudenvankoeien.nl.