McDonalds and Advertising for Children

McDonalds and Advertising

Children are unfair victims of advertisers. Those younger than eight years old do not have the cognitive ability to understand that advertisers are just trying to sell them something. Nevertheless, the children’s market is far too large for businesses to ignore and they continue to spend more and more money to reach this audience. In particular, McDonald’s spends the largest amount of money of any company to market to children. It’s armed with a stable of characters, toys, and playgrounds that children adore to get children to consume their unhealthy fast food. Unfortunately, the social and economic consequences are severe. Children are getting sick and it’s costing the economy billions of dollars to cope with diseases such as obesity and diabetes. But, no one seems to agree on what should be done about the problem. Should the government step in? Or, should advertisers come together and develop their own voluntary guidelines for advertising to children? Alternatively, is it only the responsibility of parents to guide their children to make healthy choices? This paper asserts that government regulation is the best solution to protect children from advertisers because businesses have no incentive to do so and because parents simply are not in a position to control the problem.

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Advertising and Children

Commercials leverage psychological research to appeal to children. They use developmental psychology principles to devise campaigns to persuade children they need a product and to get the children to nag their parents to buy it. Campaigns use characters and celebrities that children like to increase the appeal of advertisements. For children to critically process commercials, they would have to be able to discriminate between commercial and noncommercial content and understanding that the advertising is trying to persuade them to do something. However, they are unable to do so. Instead, children readily accept advertising as fair, accurate, balanced and truthful. They do not see the bias or exaggeration or the bias behind the claims. Unfortunately, parents can’t necessarily alter this situation. Increasingly, more children are using the Internet and watching television in their bedrooms, where there is no adult to explain what the advertisers are doing.

The average American child views as many as 40,000 television commercials every year. After only one exposure to a commercial, children can recall the ad’s content and want to obtain the product. Starting at age three, children recognize brand logos. Brand loyalty influence starts at age two. Children, who watch a lot of television, want more toys seen in advertisements and eat more advertised food than children who do not watch as much television. And, advertisement can have a negative impact on other more positive messages. For instance, research has proved that child-directed advertisements for healthy foods lose their appeal for children who views commercials for snack foods in the same setting.

In the late 1990s, the media, advertising and marketing budgets targeted at children was around $12 billion. This amount of money is being spent because the advertisements work and because children represent a huge target audience. In 2002, children ages four to twelve spent approximately $40 billion and in 2000, children twelve years and under influenced the household spending of more than $600 billion.

McDonald’s Role in Advertising to Children

McDonald’s accounts for the lion’s share in advertising to children. It spends $3 billion on advertising and marketing directly toward children. As a result, ninety percent of American children between the ages of three and nine regularly visit this fast food chain. Ninety-six percent of school children in the United States can identify Ronald McDonald, the fast-food restaurant’s clown spokesman. McDonald’s advertising is so effective that children recognize Ronald McDonald more than George Washington or Jesus. Only Santa Claus is more recognized than Ronald McDonald. The Advertising Age magazine has cited Ronald McDonald as number two on its list of top ten advertising icons of the 20th century. The Marlboro Man was number one.

The book Fast Food Nation explains how McDonald’s replicated the marketing tactics of The Walt Disney Company, which inspired the creation of advertising icons such as Ronald McDonald and his supporting characters. The theory behind child-targeted marketing is that it not only attract children, but also their parents and grandparents as well. And, it instills brand loyalty in them, which lasts throughout adulthood through nostalgic associations to McDonald’s. This is commonly known as . James McNeal, a children’s marketing expert explains that companies such as McDonald’s, “start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime.”

McDonalds’ has targeted children in a variety of ways. In its initial television commercials, Ronald McDonald lived in a fantasy world called McDonaldland and has adventures with characters such as Grimace, Hamburglar, Birdie the Early Bird, and The Fry Kids. McDonalds uses McDonaldland and its fun characters to make eating at the restaurant seem like an adventure to children as described by the words in the following McDonald’s commercial:

Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonaldland / Take along a friend, and grab ahold of Ronald’s hand / Follow Ronald McDonald through the land of apple pie trees / And don’t be surprised if you meet Big Mac and Big Cheese / There’s a thick shake volcano, you’ll even find a French fry plant / Now just turn around, and see if you won’t find a hamburger patch / As you’re heading fooooor… A McDonald’s… In McDonaldland, a McDonald’s…”

During this ad, Ronald McDonald guides two children through McDonaldland, showing off the characters and geographic features. Of course, the trip ends at a McDonald’s restaurant. And, of course, the ad inspires children to begin their own fantasy journey to McDonald’s.

McDonald’s marketing efforts directed at children extend far beyond running conventional ads. The McDonaldland ads get children to come to the restaurants while Playlands get them to keep coming back. McDonald’s operates around 8,000 Playlands in America that are especially attractive to children who live in neighborhoods that do not have playground. And, then there’s the allure of toys included with meals. McDonald’s launched the Happy Meal in 1979 that provided food in a cardboard box with a circus theme along with a McDoodler stencil, a puzzle book, a McWrist wallet, an ID bracelet and McDonaldland character erasers. Because this was such as success, McDonald’s followed with many variations of its Happy Meal including a version for Star Trek, a version including McDonald’s character mascots, and themed versions linked to popular children’s toys and movies such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, The Little Mermaid, and Finding Nemo. By 2003, Happy Meals accounting for twenty percent of all meals sold in the world and brought in $3.5 billion in annual revenue.

Most recently, McDonald’s marketing efforts have focused on building brand images. Essentially, McDonald’s goal is turn everything it can into an advertisement for the company. It has created the McKids line of products that includes clothing, toys, videos, DVDs and books. Children can’t escape McDonald’s even if their parents don’t allow them to watch that much television.

In its bid to win the parents of children, McDonald’s understood the value of promoting it as a caring, family-friendly place. Thus, it began linking McDonald’s with charities for children. A McDonald’s marketing executive states, “It was an inexpensive, imaginative way of getting your name before the public and building a reputation to offset the image of selling 15-cent hamburgers. It was probably 99 per cent commercial.” Soon, the now famous Ronald McDonald House Charities were created to provide housing for the families of millions of seriously ill children. Now, McDonald’s is even claiming to help research the obesity and diabetes that its very own fast food has caused.

Social Implications

The marketing tactics of fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s have worked. The average American now consumes about three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every week. That amounts to ninety grams of fat and 2,520 calories. But, the average person needs only about 2,000 calories for a whole day. As a result of eating unhealthy foods, people are getting fat. The percentage of children and teenagers who are overweight has tripled in the past thirty years, according to the Center for Disease Control. One-third of overweight students are more than twenty percent above their ideal weight. These more severely overweight children have medical problems such as a fatty liver, a precursor to liver disease, high blood pressure, and an increasing likelihood of Type 2 diabetes. In addition, obese children are becoming prime candidates for heart attacks and strokes even while they are only in their teens.

Nutritionists warn that fast food is one of the worst things in the diet because of its calories, trans fats, lack of fiber and added sugars and process carbohydrates. A nutrition advisor states, “If you’re looking at the Dollar Menu in terms of how much food you get it really appears as a good bargain. But if you’re looking at it as how many nutrients are you getting for a dollar, it’s the least economical.”

New findings on the biological effects of fast food suggest that obesity isn’t simply down to a lack of an individual’s self-control. Some scientists are starting to believe that eating too much of foods that are excessively high in fat and sugar such as those from fast food restaurants can cause changes to a person’s brain and body that make it hard to resist fast food. Some scientists even believe that the foods can trigger changes that are similar to full-blown addiction.

Regardless of who is really to blame for fast food consumption, society and the legal system hold individuals accountable. In 2002, a group of American teenagers brought a lawsuit against McDonald’s, blaming it for their obesity and health problems since they had lived on a daily diet of burgers and fries from the restaurant.

The lawsuit alleged that McDonald’s had violated New York State’s consumer fraud statues by deliberately misleading consumers into thinking their products were healthy and nutritious. The lawsuit said McDonald’s had failed to adequately provide information on the heath risks of its fast food The U.S. District Court dismissed the lawsuit. The federal judge that reviewed the case said, “Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald’s…If a person knows or should know that eating copious amounts of supersized McDonald’s products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain, it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses.” This was the decision even though McDonald’s markets to children.

Economic Implications

Obesity costs the United States about $118 billion annually, including direct health care costs for diseases related to obesity and indirect costs, such as loss of productivity. The World Bank estimates that about twelve percent of the overall United States budget for health care is spent on the treatment of obesity. About half of this amount can be directly attributed to direct cost of treating obesity such as the administered medical treatments. There is also an indirect cost of obesity in the business sector, which is a result of higher absenteeism among extremely overweight employees, loss of productivity, and restricted activity. The expensive of obesity is born by everyone, not just the obese. In 2003, every taxpayer paid around $170 to manage obesity-related problems such as clogged arteries, cancer and diabetes.

The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 1997 was estimated to be $98 billion, including $44 billion in direct medical and treatment costs and $54 billion for indirect costs attributed to disability and mortality. The direct costs represented almost six percent of total personal healthcare expenditures in the United States. Of the indirect costs, disability amounted to $37.1 billion and mortality amounted to almost $17 billion. More than 74,927 workers were reported to be permanently disabled because of diabetes in 1997.

Political Implications

Some experts fear that children are defenseless in the face of increasingly sophisticated advertising techniques and increased targeting, and are made to want everything they see advertised on television, products that are often detrimental for the child’s health. “This ‘moral anxiety attack’ sets the stage for efforts to restrict, or eliminate altogether, advertising directed to children.” As a solution, some call for either government regulation or self-imposed marketing and advertiser regulation.

Government regulation and self-imposed regulation pose challenges for a variety of reasons. Advertising is everywhere and there’s nothing that the government or business can do to separate children from advertisements that target children and those that target adults. Attempts to regulate advertising will meet significant opposition under claims of violation of free speech as was the case with the overturn of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 because it was declared to be unconstitutional. Voluntary guidelines have not been effective in the past.

As one business gains success by crossing the line, others feel compelled to do so in today’s cut throat competitive environment.

Many feel that parental regulation is by far the better option. Research reveals that children are more influenced by parents and playmates than by the mass media. Further, the majority of commercials targeted at children have a pro-social message. And, parents have the responsibility and opportunity to regulate what their children see. It’s true that they can’t control everything, but the evidence suggests that the effects of the media are minimized when parents talk to their children about them. For all these reasons, those against government intervention feel the allure of government and business regulation is overshadowed by parental guidance and is the answer to protecting children from unwanted advertisements.

Analysis and Conclusion

Self-imposed regulations by the advertising industry and parental guidance have not and will not protect children from advertisers. Given the billions of dollars that corporations spend on advertising to children, the advertising industry has a conflict of interest that will prevent it from doing the right thing. True, parents can influence the behavior of their children. But, unfortunately, advertising campaigns for children have cleverly woven a web that nets children and adults alike. Further, the ubiquity of advertising channels makes it impossible to restrict a child’s access to ads.

Government regulation is the only option that will protect children from advertisers. The government already regulates the advertising of products such as cigarettes and alcohol that have proven to have negative health consequences. Because of the rise in obesity and diabetes, fast food should not be an exception. At a minimum, the government should place the same restrictions on fast food advertising as its does for alcohol and cigarette advertising. This may not be a panacea, but at least it would be a step in the right direction. As fast food businesses realize they are not immune to government regulation, they will be more likely to curb their unethical conduct to avoid even further restrictions.

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