Grammy got run over by McDonald’s… on her way from the market the other day. Okay bad Christmas songs come to mind on 100º plus days, but the premise is true. Grammy had been out picking up a few groceries with our five year-old grandson and was heading home when he spoke up and asked for lunch at McD’s. We eat fast food so seldom that I’m surprised he even thought to ask, but more important: he knew a Happy Meal would come with an Ice Age toy. That’s it. Grammy was crushed under McDonald’s marketing machine. A week passes and they’re together again for the day, and what happens, Grammy can we go to Burger King? Guess what? Burger King’s kids’ meals have Transformers in them! That truck missed. She was a little quicker on her feet that day. Besides Burger King’s marketing is much less effective because we don’t even know what they call their meals. But Wait, There’s More! I find out that when they go down the cereal aisle at the store he usually asks for Gummy Bear cereal. When asked how he knows about it he jumps right in and says “I saw it on TV”. But Wait There’s More! That healthy, natural, enriched, preserved, everlasting shelf life, weevil- scaring, customer-demanded cereal is on the bottom shelf, right next to every other preserved and colored box of technological advancement. In fact anything that resembles food is on the top shelf. It hurts my neck trying to get the bifocals pointed high enough to read the labels.
But Wait Their’s More! I’m sure it’s easier to market for five year-olds than adults; in fact I am positive it’s easier. They market child-targeted products at the less expensive times. If you want to reach the truly mature knowledgeable adults you go for high dollar slots, like the Super Bowl. Average price for a thirty second slot in 2009’s Super Bowl? 2.7 million dollars. This is for the one event during the year that we don’t TiVo so we can skip the commercials. This is the one we TiVo so we can skip the game and watch the ads. It isn’t limited to companies doing product sales to consumers. It includes corporations selling appearance to a tertiary market. After this year’s game I once again knew BASF had nothing to sell me but they made the things I purchased better. General Electric knows how to provide us with a smart energy grid so we can move into the future. Were these companies selling me a product or showing that they were changing, in an attempt to change my attitude about life?
Every discussion about food, food production, and our industrial food manufacturing system brings up the tsunami of obesity we are facing in this country and rapidly sharing with the world. And in every discussion some jump to the defense of our exciting food system. It’s consumer choice, It’s people without self-control or judgment, and the best is Its consumer demand; we only make what customers want. Consumers are demanding a toy in their Happy Meal? Customers are demanding that their children be bombarded with ads for colored, sweetened, modernized food products that can’t even be called what they emulate? I doubt that we as consumers have much of a chance against multimillion dollar advertising budgets designed to manipulate our wants, needs, and desires. Just as I doubt that many consumers buying bottled water care if BASF made the bottle “better”. The next time I buy an electric grid I am sure I’ll consider General Electrics switches, breakers, and meters. Marketing systems have worked long and hard to direct our spending, our attitudes and our desires, and they have done a great job. We can’t remember any longer that we once thought McD’s burgers were bland slabs of semi- edible stomach-filling product. Now they’re the standard of quality burger that I’m sure comes also from “happy cows”. (Aren’t slogans great? I love that one.)
Personal choice is part of the problem with our food system as it is today; I know this because I have been told by so many food manufactures they only deliver what we ask for. My problem is that I think that some of what we believe is only a result of great propaganda. I’m still waiting for that fresh Brussels sprout commercial during the Super Bowl so that I can replay it after the boring game.
So I have a proposition. No, sorry, propositions are a ridiculous California problem. I have a proposal for all those who wish to blame our problems on consumer demand, on a consumer-driven food system which is driven from the bottom up: If you own any common stock in any food company that wastes its dollars, no, make that your dollars on advertising to people who already demand their product, contact the board of directors and insist your dividend be increased and that they stop wasting company profits on advertising to people who demand their product. It just makes business sense.
Post script: As I completed this post today I discovered that Rob Smart had just posted a much more detailed and clinical post on http://www.everytable.wordpress.com involving the effect of marketing on children, and I invite you to check that post. However, agree, or disagree, please come back and let me know what you think with your comments.
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Thanks for a great post! We send our kids to a Waldorf school and keep TV watching to a minimum (we don't even have cable), so I'm astounded by how many times my 5-year-old seemingly out of the blue requests an item I would never dream of buying (or even knew existed). Where did she hear about it? On TV! I've been preaching our own (cadged from Michael Pollan) party line that any food advertised on TV probably isn't really food as we know it to my kids for years (and at least the 10-year-old seems to be getting it). Still, I, too, am still waiting for those great, catchy, fun and no doubt psychedelically-colored brussel sprouts ads!
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