CARU staff attorney Andra Dallas gave a presentation to Community Board 1, serving lower Manhattan on Monday, December 7 th .  Andra spoke to the Board’s Youth Committee about the importance of teaching children about understanding advertising and safe online practices.  District Manager Noah Pfefferblit remarked, “thank you for your informative presentation to our Youth Committee members,” and offered the Board’s assistance if they “can be helpful to the important efforts at the Children's Advertising Review Unit.” Are you interested in having a CARU staff member visit your community board? Contact adallas@caru.bbb.org.

  On November 14th, 2009, Tina Poturica-O'Neill of CARU took part in a webinar hosted by the Food Institute entitled Advertising to Children: Successfully Meeting the Challenges .  Co-panelists included Elaine Kolish of The Children's Food and Beverage Initiative and John Feldman, Partner at Reed Smith.  This webinar, moderated by Dr. James Tillotson of Tufts University, provided guidelines to companies on how to create truthful, accurate and acceptable advertising directed to children.

Image:Skechers CARU was recently written up in the news on BNET for one of its recent cases with Skechers. CARU was concerned that one reasonable takeaway message children may have after viewing the subject commercial is that wearing Skechers' Hy-Tops will make them popular. CARU’s Guidelines state in part that product presentation should not “mislead children about benefits from use of the product. Such benefits may include, but are not limited to, the acquisition of status, popularity … .” Visit BNET to read more about this case.