Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [28]
According to these documents, the marketing alliances with other brands were intended to create positive feelings about McDonald’s, making consumers associate one thing they liked with another. Ads would link the company’s french fries “to the excitement and fanaticism people feel about the NBA.” The feelings of pride inspired by the Olympics would be used in ads to help launch a new hamburger with more meat than the Big Mac. The link with the Walt Disney Company was considered by far the most important, designed to “enhance perceptions of Brand McDonald’s.” A memo sought to explain the underlying psychology behind many visits to McDonald’s: parents took their children to McDonald’s because they “want the kids to love them… it makes them feel like a good parent.” Purchasing something from Disney was the “ultimate” way to make kids happy, but it was too expensive to do every day. The advertising needed to capitalize on these feelings, letting parents know that “ONLY McDonald’s MAKES IT EASY TO GET A BIT OF DISNEY MAGIC.” The ads aimed at “minivan parents” would carry an unspoken message about taking your children to McDonald’s: “It’S an easy way to feel like a good parent.”
The fundamental goal of the “My McDonald’s” campaign that stemmed from these proposals was to make a customer feel that Mc-Donald’s “cares about me” and “knows about me.” A corporate memo introducing the campaign explained: “The essence McDonald’s is embracing is ‘Trusted Friend’… ‘Trusted Friend’ captures all the goodwill and the unique emotional connection customers have with the McDonald’s experience… [Our goal is to make] customers believe McDonald’s is their ‘Trusted Friend’ Note: this should be done without using the words ‘Trusted Friend’… Every commercial [should be] honest… Every message will be in good taste and feel like it comes from a trusted friend.” The words “trusted friend” were never to be mentioned in the ads because doing so might prematurely “wear out a brand essence” that could prove valuable in the future for use among different national, ethnic, and age groups. Despite McDonald’s faith in its trusted friends, the opening page of this memo said in bold red letters: “ANY UNAUTHORIZED USE OR COPYING OF THIS MATERIAL MAY LEAD TO CIVIL OR CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.”
mcteachers and coke dudes
NOT SATISFIED WITH MARKETING to children through playgrounds, toys, cartoons, movies, videos, charities, and amusement parks, through contests, sweepstakes, games, and clubs, via television, radio, magazines, and the Internet, fast food chains are now gaining access to the last advertising-free outposts of American life. In 1993 District 11 in Colorado Springs started a nationwide trend, becoming the first public school district in the United States to place ads for Burger King in its hallways and on the sides of its school buses. Like other school systems in Colorado, District 11 faced revenue shortfalls, thanks to growing enrollments and voter hostility to tax increases for education. The initial Burger King and King Sooper ad contracts were a disappointment for the district, gaining it just $37,500 a year — little more than $1 per student. In 1996, school administrators decided to seek negotiating help from a professional, hiring Dan DeRose, president of DD Marketing, Inc., of Pueblo, Colorado. DeRose assembled special advertising packages for corporate sponsors. For $12,000, a company got five school-bus ads, hallway ads in all fifty-two of the district’s schools, ads in their school newspapers, a stadium banner, ads over the stadium’s public-address system during games, and free tickets to high school sporting events.
Within a year, DeRose had nearly tripled District 11’s ad revenues. But his greatest success was still to come. In August