Opinion

Beef: it's what's for propaganda

Shaun Salnave
Opinion Editor

Let's pretend you marketed a product that most people now realize is one of the most unhealthful things they consume on a regular basis. Let's pretend that a vital market segment -- teenage girls -- was slipping away from you.

What would you do? Assuming you're not a tobacco company executive, you'd probably advertise. But today's teenagers are hip, or so you've been told, and traditional advertising schemes don't work on them nearly so well as they used to.

What you might do in this situation is try a tricky new form of advertising along the lines of viral marketing; make a Web site for your target market -- teenage girls -- to use as an information source. Then give it a little community feel by providing some chat functionality and message boards.

In case you hadn't guessed by now, I'm not really talking about a hypothetical case. What I'm talking about is the American Beef Association's new Web site, Cool-2B-Real (www.cool-2b-real.com).

In one of the few paragraphs of copy on the site that doesn't include the word "beef," Cool 2B Real describes itself as being "about real girls like you!" It goes on to talk about "building strong bodies and strong minds."

The site lists different ways to be real, including (stock) photography of (thin) girls talking about how being real was important to them.

There's a lot on the site about being healthy -- something I think most of us can agree is good -- and a lot about doing what you think is best and ignoring fad diets. If you're not paying attention, it's almost possible to believe that this really is meant to be a helpful site, not a marketing tool. If you're not paying attention.

If you are, though, it's pretty easy to read the site for what it really is: propaganda.

There's the fact that beef manages to slip into just about every paragraph. There's the fact that every "healthy" meal on the site includes a great deal of beef: beef wraps, beef pizza with mashed potatoes (shepherd's pie was apparently not an appetizing enough name), English muffin pizzas with ground beef crumbles, and so on. 

Forget the veggies you might consider healthful; this site's finally telling the truth. Because you can trust nutritional advice from the beef industry, just like you can trust milk advertisements from the National Dairy Council.

Salnave, a senior history and creative writing major, can be reached at ssalnave@uh.edu.