What Advertising Levers Can Be Used to Encourage Children to Eat Insects? An Approach Based on Drawings: An Abstract

Abstract

Although still a very uncommon dietary practice in the West, entomophagy is increasingly mentioned as a solution to limited food resources. The purpose of the present study is to identify advertising levers that could help children to adopt this practice. A qualitative study based on children’s drawings and on brief interviews was conducted in spring 2020 to identify the associations made with regard to insects and eating them. Drawing is a particularly effective means of capturing their opinions, emotions and representations of the world (Damay & Guichard, 2018). Three successive tasks with simple instructions were proposed to 45 children aged between 6 and 12 years. Each child was asked to produce three drawings in succession.

Because of a proven role in the introduction of new products or behaviors within the family (Gollety, 1999; Josion-Portail, 2014) and their appetite for novelty, children are a prime target for fostering a new practice such as entomophagy in the family’s food repertoire. Our results reflect two main orientations: utilitarian and symbolic. In the first instance, advertising refers to a direct benefit for them. It can be playful: the discovery of a new food can be part of a ludic context with a themed snack or in a school setting where learning is done through a playful activity. The benefit can be the learning itself, which provides the child with knowledge that he/ she will in turn transmit to the family. It can also be gustatory: some food brands, for example, associate food well-being with sensory pleasure (HémarNicolas & Ezan, 2018). For entomophagy, enhancing the taste of a food partly composed of insects would be a relevant lever. Some researchers find that children’s food choices are primarily driven by the pursuit of pleasure and that they associate this with tasting the food (Marty et al., 2017). Advertising messages on the packaging using forms of execution liked by children and generating positive emotions could generate a favorable halo effect around the new product (Ezan et al., 2021). The second axis involves symbolic levers. The product may be presented in the context of an exotic trip (discovering the country’s gastronomy) or more locally, in a family restaurant (rather upscale given the unusualness of the food). The product can be a pretext for stimulating social interactions between kids (a game, a challenge among peers) or intergenerational within the reassuring framework of the family. The consumption of insects, whose exotic nature is apparent in many drawings, can be part of an adventure scenario or a new and captivating experience. The familiarity arising from repeated exposure to positive advertising messages could eventually create a habit conducive to entomophagy.