Thursday, April 30, 2015

Cereal Giant Kellogg’s Urged to Stop Promoting Gambling to Children

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Online campaign to ban casino-style marketing for breakfast cereal

Staffordshire, UK - (May 05, 2015) - Musician and community activist, Ben Westwood, 29, from Cannock, Staffordshire has launched an online campaign to ban Kellogg’s casino-style branding and marketing of its Krave Choco Roulette breakfast cereal, because of a growing concern that it’s encouraging children to gamble.

Food multinational, Kellogg’s, is marketing its new Krave breakfast cereal using slot machine and casino imagery, and has even given it a casino-style name.The cereal consists of four different flavoured fillings with identical cereal coating – and the idea behind both the brand and marketing is that you don’t know which flavour you’ve got till you bite in.

“We’re appalled that a company like Kellogg’s is using supermarket shelves and families’ breakfast tables to promote the excitement of gambling to children in such a blatant and irresponsible way,” explains Westwood, who has had gambling addiction problems himself in the past and has given up two days’ work a week to run the campaign.“It’s thoughtless and unethical,” he adds, “and a company like Kellogg’s should, quite simply, know better.”

The company’scasino-style marketing is fuelling concern that, following a relaxation of UK gambling laws in 2007, children are increasingly exposed to the gambling industry, throughadvertisements and the promotion of free-to-play, online gambling games. There is a growing body of academic research that supports the view that children playing these games will be more likely to gamble for money and develop gambling problems, and Westwood believes that Kellogg’s marketing is contributing to this social crisis.

Westwood and the ‘Ban Kellogg’s Krave Choco Roulette’ Facebook group are urging consumers to boycott the product and to sign their online petition to ban the cereal. If you would like to support them, please visit:

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Further information
For interviews, photographs or more information, please contact
Ben Westwood
Telephone: 07780 797505

Facebook page: Stop grooming our kids to gamble petition


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