They believe grownups are always right. They believe tv is always right because grownups make tv and grownups let them watch it. They also believe that coming into contact with something more frequently automatically means that it’s better, because the grownups would stop it if it wasn’t. I remember believing all of these things myself.

To a certain extent, peers also form part of The Institution. I used to think everyone in the world got together and talked about what was good and what was bad behind my back and then made decisions on things like what happened on tv, which products were good or bad etc and only the ones that they decided were good remained.

And if you would have asked me these questions when I was a small child, I absolutely would have said that “Anything made by McDonald’s tastes better”, for all the reasons already listed: I thought that’s what grownups wanted me to say. I trusted grownups so much that I would believe it was better because they said so. Even the places that looked more professional would *be* *better* because otherwise, why would they look so good? (And McDonalds somehow got it just right to make it ‘look better’ to children.) And of course the fact that it was such a rare treat for me meant it was treated with some reverence.

Because of the way small children look at the world, advertising hits them the hardest. Not the least. ["A recent study ... demonstrated that advertising influences EVEN young children." Nope. It ESPECIALLY influences young children. Because of the way young children are designed. ]

By the way, a really good organization is the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. I’m not sure if J.D. will let me post a link, but here it is:

http://www.commercialexploitation.org/

Mike

[...] this week, I was reading how marketing affects how children perceive food at Get Rich Slowly. The original study claims that low-income children from age 3-5 perceived [...]

The second point still holds up, though. It might have just been a case of ‘official’ branding versus generic, not a case of McDonalds being successful at marketing to extremely young children.

Case in point: it wasn’t that one food was wrapped without the logo and was was wrapped with the logo; one food was clearly ‘unwrapped.’ There are psychological implications to this as it seems like the food wasn’t prepared *for* them. It just *was*.

Second– this study doesn’t test other types of branding. It could be that the kids saw an emblem– in this case the golden M of McDonalds– and associated that with a company producing a product. Again, this is a case of someone creating something FOR them versus them picking something out that just was.

Looking at it that way, I don’t see why the kids *wouldn’t* have thought the wrapped product tasted better. And it had nothing to do with McDonalds.

1.) Koigu
2.) Red Bull (no, she’s not allowed to drink it)
3.) Whole Foods (there are only so many places her MSG-intolerant celiac mom can eat lunch out and, uh, that’s one of them).

JenK, I *love* your story.

And count us in the no TV bandwagon. (We have one, but no cable — it’s in the basement so we can watch the odd DVD. The spawn’s never watched any. And we’re not McD’s fans, so she’s never been there.)

But in many cases, it isn’t. And kids are especially susceptible to the whole “BrandX is better than NoBrand” phenomenon.

This can be applied to grocery shopping too. Buying store brands can save you a lot of money on your groceries.

In fact I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed The Transformers movie sooo much b/c it started reminding me of fun times from my childhood. A favorite game of mine I play with new people is actually talking about some dorky cartoons growing up…someone made a fortune on my childhood.

I guess I have to work on my cooking skills so he’ll want to eat at home!

Mike

In each case, the “regular” size actually had more fries than the “large”.

Naturally, this meant whenever any of the students when to McD’s, they’d demand that their parents buy them a “regular” because they wanted MORE FRIES than the “large” size. Loudly. My friend said the loudness was very important, so as to make sure one would have the chance to educate other patrons.

I don’t think those kids were very popular at McD’s.