That’s been the marketing strategy of McDonald’s for years, and a new study shows that it’s paying off in spades with preschoolers.
Preschoolers preferred the taste of burgers and fries when they came in McDonald’s wrappers over the same food in plain wrapping, U.S. researchers said, suggesting fast-food marketing reaches the very young.
“Overwhelmingly, kids chose the one that they perceived was from McDonald’s,” said obesity prevention expert Dr. Thomas Robinson of the Stanford University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
While prior studies have looked at the impact of individual ads on kids, Robinson and colleagues set out to study the overall influence of a company’s brand — based on everything from advertising to toy premiums and word of mouth.
This is no mistake. As Eric Schlosser notes in Fast Food Nation, McDonald’s was one of the pioneers in marketing to young children — even very young children. The company worked hard to get young kids to nag their parents to take them to McDonald’s, because they knew there would be toys there, and perhaps a McDonaldland Playground, and Ronald McDonald (the photo above, from what I understand, is from an ad campaign in India. Really kind of cuts to the chase, doesn’t it?). Ray Kroc targeted kids from the get-go, developing the Ronald McDonald character in 1960, when the chain was just beginning to expand eastward. He even tried for corporate synergy with Disneyland, realizing that kids recognized Disney characters, and would eat at McDonald’s if they saw Mickey doing it. Even though Walt shot down the idea back then, McDonald’s later got the concessions franchise at Disneyworld, and is probably the leader worldwide in marketing to kids as part of a “cradle to grave” strategy. Along with, shockingly enough, Disney.
Robinson and colleagues conducted a taste test with a total of 63 kids aged 3 to 5 who were enrolled in a Head Start preschool for low-income families.
They were offered five pairs of foods and asked if they tasted the same or to point to the one that tasted better.
The food — taken from the same order — was wrapped in either McDonald’s packaging or unbranded packages in the same color and style.
In about 60 percent of the tastings, the kids preferred food in the McDonald’s wrapper.
“They actually thought the food tasted better,” Robinson said in a telephone interview.
EVEN ‘MCCARROTS’ PREFERRED
About 22 percent of the kids chose food in the plain wrappers while 18 percent said the food tasted the same or were unable to complete the experiment.
“It ranged from 48 percent who chose the hamburger up to over 70 percent who chose French fries as tasting better if they thought they were from McDonald’s,” he said.
“Even for baby carrots, kids said the carrots they thought were from McDonald’s tasted better,” Robinson said.
The same was true of milk.
So the idea that preschoolers recognize the McDonald’s brand to such an extent that they think that the very same food tastes better when it’s in a McDonald’s wrapper than when it’s not is horrifying, but sadly unsurprising. And then the question becomes, what can you do about it?
The problem is that, unlike when I was a kid,* McDonald’s is ubiquitous these days. It’s also the only restaurant that will open in certain poor urban or rural areas, and it’s cheap enough that people who make what McDonald’s employees make — and that ain’t a whole hell of a lot — can afford to take their families there.
And as scary as the marketing Borg for the likes of the Disney Princesses and Elmo’s World are, those at least are things that kids will grow out of at some point. But while you might feel silly snuggling up to Elmo when you’re 35, you wouldn’t feel that way about McDonald’s fries and Quarter Pounders. And those fries are going to do a lot more harm to you in the long run — seriously, have you looked at the nutritional information on those things? Not that it’s easy information to track down, but it is available — than will fluffy pink princesses and annoying baby Muppets.
Of course, let’s not think about the sodium, cholesterol, saturated fat and what it’s doing to your heart, blood pressure, etc. — it’s all about the “fastidiously vilified ‘obesity epidemic.’”**
It comes as many food and restaurant companies face pressure to cut back on marketing to children as rates of obesity among that age group continue to climb.
I don’t know, shouldn’t we be concerned that kids are being heavily targeted by advertisers in the first place? And maybe, we should be concerned that they’re being encouraged to bug their parents to buy them fatty, salty food with limited nutritional value and questionable meat — served up by minimum-wage workers with no benefits and little job security or opportunity for advancement — whether or not they gain weight as a result of eating that food?
Thanks to Kat for passing this along.
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* There weren’t any McDonald’s in my town (I think there still aren’t any there, probably due to lack of available land and restrictive zoning), or really any in nearby towns until I was about 11 or 12. My family went to the Burger King every few months as a special treat, and when the McDonald’s opened up, we sometimes went there. After we moved, Kat worked at the McDonald’s in our new town, and we got comped sodas. I never really developed a taste for the stuff, though the fries are good if they’re fresh. Still got fat, though.
** Have I mentioned lately that I love Natalie Angier? I love her book Woman: An Intimate Geography, but she really stole my heart with this article on animal mothers. Mmm, lipids.
I’m honestly not that troubled by this effect - people will also say that orange-dyed cookies taste like orange or citrus or lemon, even if they’re just shortbread. It’s good to know, when you’re trying to decide whether to buy the generic ibuprofen or brand name. But we might as well just accept that the branding and look of the things we consume are a part of how and why we enjoy them. When we pay more for a brand of cheeseburger, and say that it tastes better, who’s to say we’re not getting what we pay for?
And the nutritional info is written on food wrappers, on the backs of the little paper liners for trays, is usually posted on the wall, and is available as a pamphlet.
I think one thing that has helped McDonalds gain momentum from “occasional treat” to “daily meal” has been the perception that they’re somehow “cheaper” than trying to prepare a meal for your family yourself.
And the nutritional info is written on food wrappers, on the backs of the little paper liners for trays, is usually posted on the wall, and is available as a pamphlet.
Really? I don’t remember seeing anything on my wrappers last time I visited, which wasn’t that long ago. And they sure as hell are raising a stink about being required by NYC to post the nutritional information prominently on the menu in the stores.
And this is part of why my kids don’t get to eat at McDonald’s (except when we’re on a long roadtrip and it’s the only place around.) The other part is that McDonald’s isn’t actually food. It’s some kind of food like substance that, at least to me, tastes absolutely disgusting. Although the kids do seem to like it.
That picture is creepy.
I have numerous problems with McDonald’s and I don’t think it should even be called “food.” (look at this video for why: http://shizzville.com/how-nasty-are-mcdonalds-fries )
McDonald’s has lied to their consumers about what is in their products: they said their fries were vegetarian, they aren’t. Religious vegetarians sued. McD’s settled for $10 mil. ( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/05/national/main511109.shtml )
McDonald’s regularly serves coffee too hot for handling through the drive-thru, knowing it will spill on some people and cause 3RD DEGREE BURNS in the genitals. Burned victims sued and WON. (http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm )
McDonald’s doesn’t post their nutritional information in all stores. They were sued and finally added nutritional info to their wrappers. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/business/26food.html )
They don’t seem to do anything right unless they get sued. Do they seem trustworthy to you?
ks it’s because it’s loaded up with sugar (burger, bun, and sauces). Kids are extremely sensitive to sugar tastes, so a burger that has a sugar or HFC preservative in it is going to be more tantalizing than a real, outdoor-barbeque grass-fed burger.
It’s hard to talk about how to deal with this sort of stuff — if I were a parent, I’d definitely limit McDonalds, but I would be afraid that my kids would just start to fetishize it.
Honestly, I don’t think that the thought of having kids would be so repulsive to me if it weren’t for the consumer culture they’d be raised in.
Even though Walt shot down the idea back then, McDonald’s later got the concessions franchise at Disneyworld, and is probably the leader worldwide in marketing to kids as part of a “cradle to grave” strategy. Along with, shockingly enough, Disney.
Ironically, Disney’s new corporate policy of refusing to do McDonald’s and other fast-food tie-ins is now hurting them at the box office, because kids who weren’t relentlessly hammered with the latest “Ratatouille” toy didn’t whine to see the movie like they did with “Shrek 3.”
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the opening weekend box-office receipts:
“Ratatouille” (with no McDonald’s marketing): $47.2 million
“Shrek the Third” (with heavy McDonald’s marketing, including tie-in food and Happy Meals): $121.6 million
I think that Disney made the right moral choice by deciding not to market unhealthy fast food to kids anymore using their characters, but I wonder how long that moral stance will last when they’re faced with a huge loss of revenue like that.
Interesting article on Yahoo! News about kids and food: “Low-Cal Sweets Might Still Make Kids Obese.” It’s very brief, but it basically says that giving kids diet drinks and diet sweets can backfire because they don’t make the right association between calories and taste.
Which pretty much backs up everything I’ve ever heard: give your kids as much fresh, healthy food as they’ll eat along with small amounts of regular treats and they’ll be fine.
It is hard, but I try to not treat it as a big deal. We talk a lot about things that are healthy for the body and things that are only ’sometimes treats’. We keep a lot of fruit, cheese, whole wheat crackers, etc., on hand for snacks, if we have sweets around, usually it’s homemade, and we rarely get fast food.
The oldest (5 years old) seems to get it and he doesn’t whine about that sort of stuff to me, but then he also knows that whining will get him exactly nowhere except sent to his room the minute we get home. But, as much as he seems to like the food, on the rare occasions he gets McD’s or other fast food, he seems just as happy about the toys with the kid’s meal as with the food itself.
Sweden has outlawed marketing to children 12 and under. I think it’s high time we did that ourselves here in the States.
Mnemosyne:
It would have been the height of irony if Ratatouille, a movie about a rat who wants to become a french chef, was advertised at McD’s.
Agreed that it didn’t seem to have the nag-factor that other Disney movies had. I didn’t hear a single kid moaning about wanting to see it.
I was kind of suprised that it got made at all. Is the American media done villifying France then?
Ironically, Disney’s new corporate policy of refusing to do McDonald’s and other fast-food tie-ins is now hurting them at the box office, because kids who weren’t relentlessly hammered with the latest “Ratatouille” toy didn’t whine to see the movie like they did with “Shrek 3.”
Do you think the box-office thing can really be explained by the McD thing? Shrek 3 is the sequel to two already wildly popular, extremely kid-friendly movies. Ratatouille is a movie about a rat who wants to be a chef. Now maybe I’m weird, but when I was a kid, I had no real interest in rats (especially since they didn’t exactly make the rats much more cute & cuddly than real rats are, at first glance at least). And I had no real interest in chefs. If you had told 8-year-old me there was a movie about a rat trying to cook, I would have said “Be quiet, I’m trying to watch Sailor Moon.”
Plus, the Shrek movies have a lot of dumb gags (which, I like the Shrek movies okay though they’ve been getting worse for sure). Ratatouille… is about a rat who wants to be a chef. Dunno that I would say it’s for the attention-span-challenged.
Am I saying the McD thing had NO effect? Of course not. But hey, maybe McD wouldn’t have wanted to put a freaking rat all over its food when they’re creepy enough as it is.
Do you think the box-office thing can really be explained by the McD thing?
Yes, I do. It doesn’t seem odd to you that “Ratatouille” is the lowest-grossing Pixar movie by $20 million right after Disney cuts off the fast-food tie-ins?
Is it all completely due to the fast food? No. But you can’t come on this thread decrying how horrible McDonald’s is for advertising to kids and then try to say that having McDonald’s market “Shrek” to kids on every commercial had no effect at all.
It seemed to me like Ratatouille snuck up on us. Maybe it’s that fast-food advertising tie-ins account for the lion’s share of movie advertising, but the first time I’d even heard about Ratatoille was only a couple of weeks before it was released. If kids aren’t hyped up for a movie, they aren’t going to beg to see it.