A week prior to last year’s Justin Timberlake-endorsed World Children’s Day (“November 20 at McDonald’s - Save the date to help the world’s children” © McDonald’s), McDonald’s formally announced its intention to further extend the brand with the launch of “McKids”, an ambitious plan to license the McDonald’s brand name to a range of companies including Creative Designs, Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc. among others. From Spring 2004, a range of “top quality, action-oriented toys, casual contemporary clothing, interactive videos and books, all reflecting today’s active lifestyles” will be available in stores in the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, Australia, Korea and Taiwan, with plans to expand the range to a number of other countries. US retailers already signed up to sell the McKids range include Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Target.

According to Larry Light, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer, the business potential for McKids is huge, “it will unify all our retail licensed products under one brand, with one brand look and one brand vision. It's all about connecting with consumers in fresh, relevant ways both inside and outside our restaurants."

Certainly, the launch of McKids would provide a convenient and lucrative alternative to advertising, should the American and British lobbies currently calling for a ban on advertising to children by companies that make fatty foods yield any kind of results. McKids would be one possible way to bypass such a ban and to further grow the already saturated McDonald’s brand amongst its core target audience – children. Although the McKids range won’t be sold in McDonald’s restaurants, it will at least be promoted there, providing parents with the opportunity to try out new variations of old phrases for size (“Do toys go with that shake?”).

McKids may well be “one more strategic element in the company’s ongoing revitalization plan that has helped usher in a new era of marketing at McDonald’s,” as Larry Light puts it, but current global obesity worries have set the alarm bells ringing. The World Health Organisation has identified obesity as a global problem, claiming that over 300 million people are now obese. In the UK, one in 25 children is now classified as being obese. The Chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned of a junk food ‘time-bomb’ which threatens to engulf a whole generation of British children grown fat on a diet of burgers and sedentary living. The influential International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) has warned that more than 40% of British men and women could be obese within a single generation, making the UK second only to the US in the global obesity stakes.

Not for nothing has McDonald’s adopted a new advertising strategy which concentrates on the quality of produce used in preparing McDonald’s food aimed at de-bunking a few of the fast food myths surrounding McDonald’s. For instance, did you know that McDonald’s only uses free range eggs and organic milk? That McDonald’s hamburgers are made from 100% beef and nothing else? Unfortunately for McDonald’s, the company has already fallen foul of the British Advertising Standards Authority more than once of late for being less than wholly truthful in its advertising claims.

The Independent Television Commission administered a wrap across the fast food giant’s knuckles by banning ads for McDonald’s Steak Premiere sandwich ("steak in ciabatta with chargrilled peppers, onions and a black pepper mayo") after upholding viewer complaints that the tantalising burger shown in the offending ad bore little more than a passing resemblance to that on sale in McDonald’s restaurants.

The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) later upheld a number of complaints from the general public that ads for McDonald’s fries were misleading (“We peel them, slice them, fry them and that's it. This simple process might not make for a very long story, but it certainly makes for irresistibly long fries.”). McDonald’s fries are of course part cooked elsewhere and have salt and colour added. McDonald’s responded by claiming that the offending ad was “not intended to be a literal and comprehensive statement of the processes involved.” The burger concern last fell foul of the ASA in March, thanks to an outdoor poster campaign which suggested Big Mac purchase necessary to win competition prizes. Reading out his 1997 judgment in the infamous ‘McLibel’ trial brought by McDonald’s against London Greenpeace anti-McDonald’s leafleters Dave Morris and Helen Steel, the Honourable Mr. Justice Bell said that “…the sting of the leaflet to the effect that the Plaintiffs exploit children by using them, as more susceptible subjects of advertising, to pressurise their parents into going to McDonald’s is justified. It is true.” In his two hour summing up, Mr. Justice Bell also found that the two McLibel defendants had shown that McDonald’s falsely advertised its food as nutritious and did indeed risk the health of long-term regular customers. Exaggerated advertising claims and ambitious visual representations aside, McDonald’s and other fast food firms are concerned by the rising tide of concern raised on both sides of the Atlantic about the positively harmful effects of food advertising to children.

Last September, Britain’s FSA published a report, “Does Food Promotion Influence Children?” which concluded that advertising to children does impact on their preferences, purchase behaviour and consumption of food. Moreover, report author Professor Gerard Hastings of the University of Strathclyde Centre for Social Marketing, concluded that “these effects are apparent not just for different brands but also for different types of food.” In Sweden, a voluntary ban on television advertising for soft drinks, snacks and fast food is already in place. In the UK, Labour MP Debra Shipley has introduced a widely supported private member’s bill (National Heart Forum, the Food Commission, Diabetes UK, the National Consumer Council, the British Heart Foundation and the National Obesity Forum amongst others) calling for a ban on advertising of foods containing high levels of sugar, fat and salt to pre-school children. Introducing her bill, Shipman argued that “the message is that the products are fun and make children happy. Children repeatedly see adverts in which happy children are being made happy by happy parents giving them food and drink products that are high in fat, high in salt and high in sugar.”

It is no exaggeration to state that McDonald’s McKids venture is a reaction to the threat of a potential advertising ban; certainly it is proof of a diversified marketing strategy which potentially renders such threats irrelevant. What better advertisement for McDonald’s than hordes of children dressed in the candy stripe cheeseburger colours favoured by Ronald McDonald? McDonald’s has of course been down the McKids road before, having launched a previous McKids clothing stores venture which went under in 1991 due to poor sales. The difference this time is that McDonald’s aim is to once and for all firmly establish itself in the firmament of lifestyle brands uppermost in children’s minds – any profits made from the licensing venture will most likely be viewed as an interesting dividend from the bigger project for the hearts and minds of children from Tijuana to Taipei. It is a strategy beloved of the tobacco industry, which famously circumvented tobacco advertising restrictions by diversifying brands into other products and by creating powerful brand associations from the brand’s constituent parts. Hardly surprising that it is a practice commonly known in the business as “dark marketing”.

The McKids licensing plan comes hot on the heels of the burger giant’s first unified global advertising television campaign (“i’m lovin’ It”), which McDonald’s credits with its recent upturn in sales fortunes. The campaign, which “depicts how consumers about the world feel about the brand and the way McDonald’s fits into their lives”, includes three “brand versions” (young adult, families and general) in 12 different languages. McDonald’s most recent marketing innovations – the satire that is World Children’s Day (where children are invited to eat for charity) and McKids – show that McDonald’s, to use the jargon favoured by marketing types, is determined to stay “top of mind”.

According to Larry Light, McKids “helps us establish McDonald's as more than a trademark - we call it a trustmark”. With Ronald McDonald as acting Chief Happiness Officer, who could argue with that? Wearing its social responsibility hat, McDonald’s has said that it will require all McKids licensees to adhere to participate in a social accountability programme to prevent the exploitation of children in the manufacturing process (McKids clothes will be made in China by Shanghai Longhurst Trade). They have yet to announce a similar venture for children involved in the McDonald’s consumption merry-go-round. Without realising it, McDonald's may well have squared the McKids circle.

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