• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1243 0

prior to the film’s release. Snow White toys, books, clothes, snacks, and records were already for sale when the film opened. Disney later used television to achieve a degree of synergy beyond anything that anyone had previously dared. His first television broadcast, One Hour in Wonderland (1950), culminated in a promotion for the upcoming Disney film Alice in Wonderland. His first television series, Disneyland (1954), provided weekly updates on the construction work at his theme park. ABC, which broadcast the show, owned a large financial stake in the Anaheim venture. Disneyland’s other major investor, Western Printing and Lithography, printed Disney books such as The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom. In the guise of televised entertainment, episodes of Disneyland were often thinly disguised infomercials, promoting films, books, toys, an amusement park — and, most of all, Disney himself, the living, breathing incarnation of a brand, the man who neatly tied all the other commodities together into one cheerful, friendly, patriotic idea.

Ray Kroc could only dream, during McDonald’s tough early years, of having such marketing tools at his disposal. He was forced to rely instead on his wits, his charisma, and his instinct for promotion. Kroc believed completely in whatever he sold and pitched McDonald’s franchises with an almost religious fervor. He also knew a few things about publicity, having auditioned talent for a Chicago radio station in the 1920s and performed in nightclubs for years. Kroc hired a publicity firm led by a gag writer and a former MGM road manager to get McDonald’s into the news. Children would be the new restaurant chain’s target customers. The McDonald brothers had aimed for a family crowd, and now Kroc improved and refined their marketing strategy. He’d picked the right moment. America was in the middle of a baby boom; the number of children had soared in the decade after World War II. Kroc wanted to create a safe, clean, all-American place for kids. The McDonald’s franchise agreement required every new restaurant to fly the Stars and Stripes. Kroc understood that how he sold food was just as important as how the food tasted. He liked to tell people that he was really in show business, not the restaurant business. Promoting McDonald’s to children was a clever, pragmatic decision. “A child who loves our TV commercials,” Kroc explained, “and brings her grandparents to a McDonald’s gives us two more customers.”

The McDonald’s Corporation’s first mascot was Speedee, a winking little chef with a hamburger for a head. The character was later renamed Archie McDonald. Speedy was the name of Alka-Seltzer’s mascot, and it seemed unwise to imply any connection between the two brands. In 1960, Oscar Goldstein, a McDonald’s franchisee in Washington, D.C., decided to sponsor Bozo’s Circus, a local children’s television show. Bozo’s appearance at a McDonald’s restaurant drew large crowds. When the local NBC station canceled Bozo’s Circus in 1963, Goldstein hired its star — Willard Scott, later the weatherman on NBC’s Today show — to invent a new clown who could make restaurant appearances. An ad agency designed the outfit, Scott came up with the name Ronald McDonald, and a star was born. Two years later the McDonald’s Corporation introduced Ronald McDonald to the rest of the United States through a major ad campaign. But Willard Scott no longer played the part. He was deemed too overweight; McDonald’s wanted someone thinner to sell its burgers, shakes, and fries.

The late-1960s expansion of the McDonald’s restaurant chain coincided with declining fortunes at the Walt Disney Company. Disney was no longer alive, and his vision of America embodied just about everything that kids of the sixties were rebelling against. Although McDonald’s was hardly a promoter of whole foods and psychedelia, it had the great advantage of seeming new — and there was something trippy about Ronald McDonald, his clothes, and his friends. As Mc-Donald’s mascot began to rival Mickey Mouse in name recognition, Kroc made plans to create