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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Fuck off Aptamil...

183 replies

MsFox · 16/12/2010 22:57

...with you Facebook targeted adverts.

Since announcing my pregnancy on Facebook, I have been targeted by so many formula companies advertising 'baby clubs'. Aptamil are offering a free polar bear, and '1 to 1 advice'.... I wonder if this advice includes breastfeeding advice? No? Oh... no money in breastfeeding I suppose...

OP posts:
tiktok · 18/12/2010 17:34

Ribena I made the same point here:

tiktok Fri 17-Dec-10 14:27:05

Of course it is ff mothers and babies who pay for the 'free' (ha!) gifts.

nickel, the company pays, and passes on the marketing cost in the price of the product.

It doesn't matter a bit if you unpick the logo. The polar bear is already linked - via marketing - to Aptamil, just as the stuffed cow is linked to Cow&Gate.

nickeldonkeycarrymary · 18/12/2010 17:41

i know :( i was just trying to help.

the ones who pay are the mothers who do use the formula.

RibenaBerry · 18/12/2010 19:41

Sorry Tiktok- I did say I'd read most of the thread and didn't think it had been made. I guess the thing that makes me most angry is not that the cost of formula is high (though it is) but that many people actually struggle to afford it. Regardless of how supportive we are of breastfeeding, it will be needed and that shouldnt be the case.

MsFox · 18/12/2010 20:19

I just wish formula companies hadn't been allowed to become so commercialised.

It should (IMO) be available as 'pescription' as a safe alternative for women who can't breastfeed.

This is the health and nutrition of babies and infants we are talking about here. Formula is not and will never be as good as breastmilk, so why are they allowed to make profit selling something that is uneccessary (in most cases) and nutritionally inadaquate, and not only make profit, but find any available loop in the law against formula being advertised and exploilt it.

OP posts:
PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo · 18/12/2010 21:19

I like the way that the BfN do not use 'Breast is Best'. They say 'breast is normal'.

So breastfeeding is not something that only the Perfect Mother does - the unattainable Perfect Mother. No, it is something utterly ordinary, every-day, normal, that even we slovenly imperfect mothers can do.

ApricotWorms · 18/12/2010 22:34

I am VERY angry about this because I am on Facebook and I use Aptamil but they haven't sent me a polar bear! How very rude of them! Who shall I complain to?

tiktok · 18/12/2010 23:05

Apricot - if you are desperate for a polar bear, then call the consumer line on the pack.

They are giving them away.

They want you to have one.

An alternative would be for you to make a sandwich board advertising it and hang it on the pram.

It would do the same job Hmm.

Himalaya · 18/12/2010 23:43

All I get on Facebook at the mo are breakfast cereal ads. They must know how interesting my life is...

toddlerwrangler · 19/12/2010 09:45

Prescription hey? Any other forms of parenting you would like to police?

PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo · 19/12/2010 09:56

To protect the health of our unborn babies are told to restrict our diets and our activities. Advice that most of us follow without any further research. So why should dietary advice to protect the health of our babies be so outrageous once they are born?

TattyDevine · 19/12/2010 10:01

They should have disposable nappies on prescription too, so that those lazy parents are forced to use washable ones. Or, better still, elimination communication.

They should send special government officials round to do spot checks in the dead of night to ensure that you have any baby under 6 months in your bedroom with you.

Those same officials could raid your cupboards and ensure there are no telltale signs of weaning before 6 months as well. To think baby rice and purees are sitting there on the supermarket shelf, just begging to be bought and shovelled down too-early-to-wean babies throats! As if their mothers are somehow able to make that decision for them, god forbid.

It beggars belief Hmm

RibenaBerry · 19/12/2010 10:04

Well, there's two points there isn't there? I don't agree with formula being 'policed' if that's what Mrs Fox means.

But I do agree that it is a scandal the amount of money formula companies make (particularly from the 1+ products which are unecessary for most/many children). In my more idealistic moments, I do wish there was a way of ensuring parents paid basically cost price for it.

TattyDevine · 19/12/2010 10:12

I can't bring myself to believe in a society where only products considered "worthy" are able to make a profit.

At least this way, the companies are spending a fair bit on research and product development/improvement.

Formula has come a long way since, say, the 1970's.

At least the babies who are having it are getting a better product.

Education on the benefits of breastmilk and breastfeeding and support for those who genuinely want to do it is going to do more for breastfeeding rates than policing formula.

If they could just make it so that 99% of people who wanted to breastfeed actually did due to adequate support, numbers would fly up.

Concentrate on those who want to, whilst continuing to educate those who dont (within reason, so at least they are just exercising informed consent) is surely the way forward.

toddlerwrangler · 19/12/2010 10:39

Tatty - very well said.

tiktok · 19/12/2010 10:45

Formula on prescription is an unworkable and an undesirable idea - it's the over-reliance on the medicalisation of infant feeding that is one of the reasons why breastfeeding became difficult in our society....and doctors really do not know enough, in general, about everyday infant feeding issues.

Tatty - what's your evidence for this?

"Formula has come a long way since, say, the 1970's.

At least the babies who are having it are getting a better product. "

In this period of 40 years (1.5 generations) some changes have been made to infant formula (eg whey dominant available) but what makes you sure this means formula is significantly 'better' than it was then and how do we know?

EdgarAleNPie · 19/12/2010 10:50

the purpose f advertising is to get people to use their product.

Aptamil are giving out those bars on facebook to sell their product.

presumably this is costly, but they view it as worthwhile.

to presume it doesn't work flies in the face of reams of research about advertising effectiveness - advertising of this kind does work.

therefore it does get people to decide to buy Aptamil and feed it to their baby, which other research shows may adversely affect the infants health.

mrsgordonfreeman · 19/12/2010 10:55

Just a point related to the OP:

It doesn't matter about your privacy settings on Facebook: the company sell your details to advertisers for targeted marketing regardless of these. They use everything including wall posts AND your private messages.

I received no marketing materials at all because I did not sign up for the Bounty Pack and used the MPS Baby service so that my details and DD's were not on any marketing database.

mrsgordonfreeman · 19/12/2010 10:56

I have no bear...I'd rather DD didn't contribute to Aptamil's brand awareness campaign.

FrostyTheCrunchyFrog · 19/12/2010 11:03

I had to go back to work when DC1 was 6 weeks old, and had to supplement 1 feed a day 5 days a week, as pumping wasn't working (looking back, I had PND, was trying to teach a full day in a very rough school, had 15 mins to pump - it was not going to work.) I could only provide enough EBM for one feed a day, the other one had to be FF (we BF more at night to make up for it). I am sure there is more I could have done, but I didn't have the tools to help me - try asking a HV for help expressing, mine looked at me as if I had asked for a lightly grilled stoat in a bun and told me to use FF.

Anyway, I remember standing in the FF aisle of Tesco, crying, trying to choose a formula. I did choose Aptimil, because the packaging was less cutsey-lovely-baby-bottle, and more medical looking. I also dimly remembered the Milupa brand from when my mum was weaning my DT brother and sister. So that was the one I went with.

Anecdotally, friends who have BF past a few months tend to be the ones whose mothers, sisters, aunts and cousins BF. The friends who used FF whether through choice or perceived necessity tended to use the brand that their families used, at least initially.

The odd thing about the medicalisation of BF - my father trained in Obstetrics in the 1970s. He knew, and insisted to my mother, that breastfeeding was much better than FF. That suggests that maybe the time when medics were convinced that artificial milk was superior was really quite short - maybe 30 years? But that was enough time to derail several generations of breastfeeding, and it seems impossible to reverse the message.

RibenaBerry · 19/12/2010 11:29

I wasn't making any comment on whether formaula is a 'worthy' product.

My point was it is a vital necessity of life if you are not, cannot, or choose not to breastfeed. I object to companies making excessive profits from the necessities of keeping life and limb together.

I feel the same about excessive gas company profits when elderly people struggle to pay their gas bills.

Also, with best will in the world, improving breastfeeding support and increasing numbers is a generation on generation project. People are very influenced by what their own parents did - just see all the posts on the breastfeeding board about pressures and bad advice. I agree we should focus money the way you said, but it doesn't help those in society right now who are ff and on tight budgets - teenage mums, for example, have very low bf ing rates and high rates of poverty. BFing support may help their daughters, but it doesn't help them balance their budget.

MsFox · 19/12/2010 11:39

I don't mean it being policed, I just think it shouldn't have been commercialised, and should be available as a back up for those that can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. I don't think they should be permitted to ram their brand down our throats at every oppurtunity.

Breastfeeding isn't profitable, which is why, unfortunately, it isn't promoted as extensively as ff. I think this is really quite sad and wish it could be different.

OP posts:
MsKLo · 20/12/2010 07:42

Kelly

At no point did I demand to know why you are not bf

I merely asked, given the obvious benefits of bf - does this or does it not carry some kind of importance to you

That you thought I demanded to know shows you are a tad defensive

Longtinsellyjosie · 20/12/2010 07:56

What I would like the government to do is to put a proper awareness campaign into the basics of breastfeeding. Baby information is passed from mother to daughter in the privacy of the home and so the insidious so-called "facts" that did so much harm to breastfeeding (eg babies need to be in a four-hour routine) are still being doled out, and still causing harm. Judging by some of these threads, there is even the odd health visitor who needs to catch up. The government also needs to counter the message that breastmilk for older babies is in some way inferior (my MIL has DD on a Monday, and gives her red meat for tea every Monday without fail because she thinks she's not getting enough iron because we're not using follow-on milk). She's had the pants worried off her by the Cow and Gate dustbin-sized sippy cup which I notice is back again Angry

Ironically, it wouldn't even need to cost any money to speak of. One of the health ministers would just need to do a round of interviews over Christmas while it's quiet.

LadyintheRadiator · 20/12/2010 08:01

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MsFox · 20/12/2010 08:21

See.. if it were less commercialised it wouldn't be as expensive. In some cases (as in yours LITR) it's an absolute neccessity and I think it's unfair and outrageous that they are allowed to make huge profits.

Someone mentioned the extensive research they do... do you think they plow as much money into that as they do their back pockets? Do you think they are doing this research out of the kindness of their hearts, or because it makes them look good? Makes them look like they care about the health of your baby rather than the size of their bank balance?

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