You can read about it here, but the gist of the story is that McDonald's and Leo Burnett (a Publicis agency) are going to be putting books instead of toys into Happy Meals for a few weeks in November. The books are original content, created by Leo Burnett specifically for this campaign, and they are children's books designed to teach them lessons about healthy eating. This goes along with a continuing effort to improve the nutritional quality of the Happy Meal, and in doing so address the well-published opinion that they are basically terrible for their own customers (a model that tobacco companies have been making money with for generations).
You throw a kid a couple of apple slices and a book about how a dinosaur eats veggies, and you are good to go. I don't think that anyone will object to giving kids healthier food, or books about eating right, even if those books are essentially promotional materials created by an advertising agency. It's still better than nothing.
It's worth noticing that this is a two-pronged effort, though, aimed not only at nutritional learning/obesity, but also literacy. The program is timed to coincide with National Literacy Day (Nov. 1), and McDonald's is teaming up with the non-profit group 'Reading Is Fundamental' to distribute more of these books outside of Happy Meals. Great news, great aims. There is nothing wrong with motivated self-interest when it brings corporations to the table to help combat the social ills that they at least in part might contribute to. Consumers aren't all saints, and we shouldn't expect companies to be either.
But let's take this idea for a walk, shall we? First, let's take a look at some issues surrounding McDonald's (and we will use them as metonymous for fast food in general), venturing into a little more depth than the usual conversation.
First, you can't talk about the issues of McDonald's and nutrition without branching into notions about poverty and urban development, and how they create food desserts. So let's stipulate a few things:
- McDonald's, based on locations, offerings, and prices, caters primarily to the lower end of the economic scale (which isn't to say that rich people never have it)
- McDonald's did not create these food desserts, but they have certainly profited from them, and from socio-economic factors that make their food appealing to people who don't have the access or resources to eat fresh, healthy food often
There might not be anything explicitly wrong with a company exploiting a market that they didn't create, it's what companies do. McDonald's dominates rest stops, oases, and highway pull-offs as well, and they are great at identifying a captive audience and offering them something that is tempting given a particular situation.
Stuck on the road and don't have anything else to eat? Have McDonald's.
Get home late from a long day of work, and don't have the money or time to prepare a healthy meal for your family? Have McDonald's.
They don't create niches, they fill them. However, that doesn't absolve them of any responsibility, or mean that they don't stand to benefit from a symbiotic relationship with their customers.
So if we acknowledge that McDonald's has a large number of customers who are members of lower income brackets, living in areas that are often under-supplied with fresh healthy foods, then we can assume that many of those same customers, in this case children, also lack access to books. Now, this isn't a good time to delve into the nuances of early education, but I think that everyone can agree that access to age-appropriate books is critical to the development of young minds.
By contributing to the learning experience of young people in the communities where their franchises exist, McDonald's can do something that not only improves the immediate quality of life for a young child who gets a book, but also improves the long-term prospects of the neighborhood by helping the cognitive abilities of its youngest inhabitants.
Why only do this for a few weeks? There is no shortage of tiny, junky plastic toys in the world, but books are another story. Make this switch permanent. Additionally, don't just have an advertising firm create content around nutritious choices. Provide real books that kids might actually enjoy reading, rather than a pamphlet just designed to get activist groups off your back.
This doesn't have to be pure altruism, as I said before. By making a strategic, foundational shift in the Happy Meal offering, McDonald's would be creating a new value proposition for the real customers here, the parents. Instead of bad food and a crappy toy, that is still attractive because of the convenience/price, they could offer decent food and a book, still at an attractive price. Right now, a lot of people have to weigh the pros and cons of giving their kids McDonald's, but that doesn't have to be the case.
If they want to go a step further in terms of making a business case for this, publish the books in longer story formats, and run them as serials. Have several different characters/story lines that the child can choose from, and put out the new volume each month. This will help encourage repeat business, but is infrequent enough to avoid accusations of exploitation or encouraging unhealthy eating habits.
In doing so, McDonald's can create the elusive "virtuous cycle" in marketing, encouraging customers to return regularly while giving back something of value and building brand loyalty.
Think about it this way: if your kid recently finished volume 2 of a space adventure, and is really enjoying the story and reading it him/herself, are you going to hit the Burger King just because it is on the way home, or go five minutes out of your way to McDonald's to get similar food AND a book that will educate and entertain your child? Probably going to buy you a few minutes of quiet time when you get home, too (reading is a quiet activity, so the more your kid reads, the quieter he/she will be).
McDonald's is uniquely positioned to be a really powerful force for positive change in a lot of neighborhoods that suffer from systemic problems of poverty and urban blight. By providing healthier food and reading material to underprivileged children they can combat two of the biggest issues that their neighbors face, all while building brand loyalty.
Now if they can just do something about their wages...
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