This Mother’s
Day, moms and their kids “deserve a break” from Ronald-run school assemblies,
adver-games and marketing at large
Guest post by Anna Lappé
On
February 10, 2012, Ronald McDonald held court in a packed elementary school auditorium. Ronald was visiting
the Lexington, Kentucky elementary school as part of his sweep of that state.
The visits are meant to teach “the value of leadership and community
involvement,” says Ronald, and kick off fundraising drives for Ronald McDonald
Houses. According to WheresRonald.com, he’s planning to visit at least 117 more
schools there this year.
What
mom would imagine you send your kid off to school only to discover an
all-school assembly has turned into an advertisement opportunity for a fast
food chain? Today, junk food marketing happens in so many places, and in so
many ways, that it’s often behind parents’ backs and beyond our control. This
school assembly is just one way McDonald’s does marketing.
Marketing
junk food and drink to kids is big business. McDonald’s alone spent close to $1
billion on advertising in the United States in 2011. Forty percent of this on
marketing directly to kids.
We
know this food marketing works: it gets kids to prefer McDonalds and to just
eat more—period. With diet-related illnesses afflicting so many young people,
marketing to kids and teens is downright dangerous.
I
talked about all this at a TEDx
event earlier this year. My point was simple: If we want to improve
the health of children and teens and turn back the epidemic of preventable
illnesses, like heart disease, diabetes, and more, we need to talk about
marketing to kids.
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Some
people, when they learn about all the ways our kids are targeted, still insist
it’s up to parents to make the right choices. Just turn off the TV. Talk to
your kids about ads. Wisen ‘em up. Don’t blame McDonalds if your kids don’t eat
right.
This
argument sounds reasonable. As a mom, I couldn’t agree more: parents should
take responsibility for their kids’ health. My two girls take their cues from
me—at least I hope they do!—perhaps nowhere more powerfully than in the
kitchen. That’s why I work hard to put good food on the table and keep junk
food out of the house. I seek out stuff without high-fructose corn syrup,
colorants, and additives; I analyze labels, shop at farmers’ markets, and
choose organic when I can. You get the idea.
But
this is the thing: The ways the food industry now targets kids are so pervasive
and the tactics so deceitful that even the most diligent parent cannot prevent
their kids from being inundated at the most impressionable stages in their
development.
Even
schools are no longer havens from marketing.
The
food industry advertises in gyms, yearbooks, and playgrounds. They’ve succeeded
in getting ads in school buses—and Ronald into school assemblies.
Corporations
sponsor school curriculum, like the Oreo Cookie Counting Book, Skittles
Counting Book, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Counting Fun Book.
No
offender is greater than McDonald’s, who has written the script on this
tactic. One McDonald’s first-grade
program asks kids to design a McDonald’s restaurant and provides information
about applying for a McDonald’s job. If your jaw is hanging open right now,
you’re like me: I was stunned when I first learned about it. (Corporate Accountability International’s
“Clowning
With Kids’ Health” is a great source for more jaw-dropping examples).
McDonalds
also has a long history of using charity as a form of marketing—and reaching
kids. The corporation is a “platinum sponsor” of the 2013 Washington State
Parent Teacher Association convention, for instance. Partnerships like this
warm up the “gatekeepers”—McDonald’s own internal descriptor for “mothers”—to a
brand that is a big negative for their children’s health.
Then
there’s “McTeacher’s Night.” The corporation puts teachers behind the register
for a night and, in exchange for their free labor and in-school promotion of
McDonald’s, donates a percentage of the evening’s profits to the local school.
Though dubbed as “charity,” McDonald’s is the one getting the real benefit: The
typical take for schools is only about $800 or the equivalent of a Saturday
morning car wash sans the junk food
marketing. Meanwhile McDonald’s gets the benefits of associating with role
models like teachers and parents.
To make matters worse, other corporations are taking McDonald’s lead.
McDonald’s supplier Coca-Cola, for instance, has the popular My Coke Rewards program,
which offers points for Coke products purchased. Some PTAs are now pushing My
Coke Rewards as a fundraising tool, and the Coca-Cola website has a prominent
way to donate to your school. Never mind this essentially means turning school
communities into a grassroots marketing arm for a corporation that made $8.6 billion in profits in 2011.
And
yes, you can turn off the TV, but is that what kids are really watching? Kids
and teens are now spending many hours online, on social media or playing videos
games or interacting with apps. With hundreds of websites and apps, some targeting children as
young as preschool age, the food industry has come to dominate many children’s
social media and online experience.
Again,
McDonalds’ is leading the way. Its HappyMeal.com attracts more than a half
million unique visitors during the summer months when kids spend more time at
home. The site features a host of advertising disguised as games, or
“adver-games.” The site even features a virtual world for children to become
immersed in. To unlock “all kinds of cool stuff” in McDonald’s virtual world
(the “Happy Meal gone digital” to borrow from the web site’s description) kids
are encouraged to frequent McDonald’s and look for special codes found on the
Happy Meal’s “healthier” items (apples with caramel dipping sauce, Chocolate
Milk Jugs). In other words, in order to maximize fun in this “free” virtual
space, children are incentivized to buy Happy Meals. In McWorld, “where kids
rule,” buying Happy Meals is the best way to obtain, “accessories for your
avatar, treehouse, or interactive pets” and visit with popular movie, comic,
and TV characters.
Many of these websites also ask for personal information, sometimes requiring
it for viewers to engage fully in a game or offering incentives for providing
it. All this can go on without parents realizing it. McDonald’s, for instance,
buries the line: “Hey kids, this is advertising!” in a small font in a tree
branch in the upper left hand corner of its newly revamped online platform.
Perhaps
most pernicious of all, McDonald’s also pays people the public trusts to serve
as “brand ambassadors” for the junk food corporation. Ahead of the 2012 Summer
Olympics, for example, McDonald’s amassed a group of 400 food bloggers to write
positively about the chain in exchange for “free gifts and parties.” In 2010,
the burger giant provided 15 mom-bloggers an all-expenses paid trip in return
for their trumpeting the brand to their networks. The corporation also enlists
kid-favorite celebrity athletes like LeBron James and Gabby Douglas.
So you see, you can turn off the TV—hey, you could even throw it out the
window—and your kids will still be exposed to McDonald’s junk food marketing,
from all-school assemblies to the internet. For kids today, marketing is
ubiquitous—and McDonalds has been front-and-center in making it so. That’s why
I’m joining moms everywhere today in calling on McDonald’s to set an
example--and conclude five decades of setting a bad example—and stop marketing to kids.
You
can join me by sharing the image above, adding your voice in social media with
#MomsNotLovinIt, and taking action at MomsNotLovinIt.org.
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