• by Wendy Melillo , November 2, 2009

Baby Einstein has been dragging down The Walt Disney Co.'s image for years. Encouraging parents to let their babies watch television or other screen media, such as computers or videogames, is a toxic practice in the court of public opinion. Hiding behind a badly written press release to explain Disney's recent refund offer to Baby Einstein buyers, only makes matters worse.

Consider Disney's statement on its Web site, "Baby Einstein Sets the Record Straight on Refund," which tries to explain why the company announced Sept. 4 it will offer a $15.99 refund for up to four Baby Einstein DVDs per household bought between June 5, 2004 and Sept. 4, 2009.

After claiming it had been attacked for years by "propaganda groups taking extreme positions that try to dictate what parents should do, say and buy," Baby Einstein cried uncle.  Susan McLain, the company's general manager, calls the refund effort a "customer satisfaction action," not an "admission of guilt." Really?

Disney has been under fire since the public advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a complaint with the FTC in 2006 against both Baby Einstein and its competitor Brainy Baby. It argued that the DVDs and videos make false and deceptive marketing claims.

Calling public advocacy organizations with a legitimate beef about your product "propaganda groups" sends a strident, adversarial message that will backfire. In fairness, the evidence has neversupported Disney's marketing claims on Baby Einstein products. Naming DVDs and videos Baby Einstein, Baby Mozart, Baby Galileo and Baby Shakespeare directly communicates to parents a simple, hard-to-resist message: Their babies will become smarter if they use the products.

It's clever marketing, and parents believe it. Just analyze the parent testimonials the Kaiser Family Foundation included in a study of media directed at very young children. "My 9-month old ... watches the screen very intently," one parent said in its December 2005 report A Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers. "It's as if he really understands it and is getting smarter as he watches."

Parents genuinely thought the videos helped educate their children because they trusted the marketing. They shouldn't. The Kaiser report noted there is no scientific research to verify the educational claims. In fact, the report declared that the "main tool many parents have to assess the quality of products for in-home use is the products' own marketing and advertising."

So much for truth in advertising.

Which makes it impossible to buy McLain's online statement that Disney never claimed its products were educational. Up until the FTC complaint, Disney used the word "educational" in its marketing. After the complaint was filed, the FTC pressured Disney behind-the-scenes and the company agreed to drop the word.

The FTC, which under former President George W. Bush fostered an industry self-regulating approach to consumer complaints, considered the matter closed. In the case of Baby Einstein, this was no surprise. Bush honored the company's founder -- Julie Aigner-Clark -- as a hero in his January 2007 State of the Union speech, despite the-then pending FTC complaint. (Though she sold the company to Disney in 2001, her heroism was confined to getting rich marketing "educational" DVDs to kids who shouldn't watch TV.)

It's also hard to believe the Disney refund was prompted by customer satisfaction. Not content with Disney's offer to just drop the word "educational," the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood turned its research over to a team of public health lawyers last year. They threatened Disney with the possibility of filing a class-action lawsuit, charging unfair and deceptive marketing practices. That got Disney's attention.

Susan Linn, the consumer advocacy group's director and author of the book The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, says her group was not satisfied with the outcome of the FTC complaint.

"The FTC did put pressure on Disney and Brainy Baby to change the marketing, but there was no publicity about this, and the previous marketing [with the word "educational"] was still out there," Linn says. "It had been marketed for almost 10 years as being educational, and we thought parents deserved more."

That's why the communications strategy behind Disney's press release makes no sense.

 Continuing to attack Linn and her group, instead of inviting them to discuss differences long before the lawsuit was threatened, suggests Disney doesn't give a damn about kids. It certainly doesn't care that the American Academy of Pediatrics says TV viewing for children under 2 could be harmful. A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Washington found that babies who watched DVDs and videos learned fewer vocabulary words than infants who never watched the videos.  

Further, a new Australian study, just published two weeks ago, recommends children under 2 not spend any time watching television or using other electronic media (DVDs, computer and other electronic games). The researchers found screen time affects language development, social interaction, eye movement and the length of time babies could stay focused.

Disney should dump Baby Einstein. It's a loser in ways far more important than money. But if Disney finds it hard to part with the estimated $200 million worth of baby-learning products it sells annually, it should at least be honest and change the name. Baby Pacifier or even Baby Sitter would be more accurate. Then parents would finally understand exactly what their babies are watching -- and decide if it's worth the risk.