The McAddicts Make Pavlov, Advertisers Proud

It's no surprise that McDonald's has been slowly but surely dominated by better burgers and better fries from Burger King, tastier nuggets from Wendy's, and more satisfying milk shakes from Johnny Rockets. How has this chain, so entangled in law suits, bad publicity and fat children with angry mothers, stay standing and still coveted?

Pavlov may be thanked for giving us some scientific footing in solving this fast food mystery--unless we should be considering any possibility of the corporation slipping cocaine into our greasy, fatty, thin-sliced patties. In fact, such a thought isn't far off from what the latest news has introduced. McDonald's, without a doubt, has found a way to stick a super-fried IV into our veins and we're eager to suck on the fat. Ivan Pavlov, Russian psychologist, determined through experimental research the basic laws of conditional reflexes. His famous trials of training dogs to salivate when they hear a bell is precisely what we're looking at two centuries later.

A new study conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital has confirmed what we've always known: that children subjected to the golden arches overwhelmingly rate McDonald's frozen and then fried potato shavings as better than real wedges, McDonald's tiny bites of burgers as more delicious than a real, grilled-to-perfection 8 ouncer, its sausage patties more orgasmic than any Bob Evans links, and its nuggets beyond compare. This new study claims that kids 3 to 5 favor branded foods over branded--despite the fact that they are identical. Significantly more children are said to have rated the McDonald's labeled products as more tasty.

Taken from Advertising Age: "Researchers tested 63 children aged 3 to 5 who were also enrolled in Northern California Head Start programs. The children had an average of 2.4 TVs per household, and more than half had sets in their rooms. About 30% ate at McDonald's more than once a week and more than 75% had McDonald's toys at home. Each child was given chicken nuggets, a hamburger and french fries from McDonald's and baby carrots and milk from the grocery store. The children were given identical portions of food, some carrying the McDonald's logo, and others wrapped in plain paper. With one exception, significantly more children said the McDonald's labeled products tasted better. Oddly enough, the product they did not rate as better is McDonald's signature item: the burger." http://adage.com/article?article_id=119753

The golden arches stationed on that easily recognizable red pavilion are more than enough to make a child salivate on cue. Is it truly attributable to a fantastic branding gimmick that allows us to recognize unique tastes with that flashy loo, or is it more due in fact to old fashioned psychology? What this study finds is a hard fact merging of the effects of branding and the corruption of the mind. Don't get me wrong, this is by far a success for the corporation and for advertisers, and I highly applaud their accomplishments and abilities to so deeply ingrain. Hey, they did their job right? Barring all other measures of successes, however, it has gotten to a sore point when we have to offer carrots, apples and salads with a brand name to make children eat the good stuff. For all that it matters, advertising and consumerism is supposed to be a never-ending duel. For all that advertising persuades you to do, the individual must battle it out with a challenge. This is how the symbiotic relationship can be sustained. In other words, if your child wants those apples from McDonald's and not your shiny Whole Foods one, it's time to regulate. We play devil's advocate. You play parent.

Disney Makes Smart Move, Buys Club Penguin

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=119654

This may be one of Disney's smartest moves yet, considering its dire need to rejuvenate the Disney reputation since its final high points during my diaper days. Considered to be a classic producer of youth culture, the gradual failings of cinematic popularity and lethargic sales surely must have hit Generation Y in the face--if they cared enough that is.

In any case, Disney coughed out some movie attempts in the past decade, none of which really shone through the Pixar empire or even dared match the success of its more recent accomplishments such as Mulan. Disney tried to market its cell phone for kids, the Disney mobile. Disney tried to bank on its cable channel--which probably works for some of the couch potato junkies aged 5-13...but none of the above has really sold it through to Generation Z, the newest, most technologically connected generation of all.

A classical mouse and all his cohorts just didn't seem likely to cut it next to the anime craze.

However, this 700 million dollar investment, though pricey for a gaggle of penguins, is pure gold. Club penguin serves all those teeny tots who cannot access Facebook or shouldn't be on MySpace, as well as planting a cute and gender-ambiguous world to frolick in. What child doesn't want to be an animal and throw snowballs at others? The swanky little island e-club also allows older kids of the forgotten classic Disney generation to sign on and harass the little ones, without seeming too intimidating. After all, you're not stalker815 on IM, you're a pink artic bird with a hat.

Club Penguin will surely be Disney's ticket to packing back some guns on its body. Becoming the Disney Club Penguin will classify the site as well as modernize the corporation. And as for being ad-free, it may be better off staying that way--but Advertising Age has got a point. It's ironic--but isn't that how advertising works?

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As a highly popular virtual portal into a cartoon world with real-life personalities behind the penguins, Club Penguin not only attracted members with its fun graphics and activities, but also with its fantastic independent label. This buy is good for both Disney and Club Penguin, but it's also a shame that Club Penguin decided not to continue showing the web world that success can work without being wrapped in red tape.

See the official letter from the founders of Club Penguin on the buy-out:
http://clubpenguin.com/news.htm

Finding Enlightenment on the Metro

"Look beyond the single news item. Are they isolated events? Or are they part of a global pattern that has real significance?"

The preaching of armageddon is no uncommon encounter. We've had it all in our respective experiences--sweet old men passing out brochures on Jesus, friendly but aggressive strangers accosting you in the middle of a campus, deceiving Korean Christians trying to recruit you to their Christian army, and of course the presumed lunatics who wander the subways and sidewalks proclaiming the end of the world and the coming of the messiah/Satan/reign of evil via the Bush administration.

These religious pawns are seen everywhere and usually ignored, albeit often times with the excusal of just being slightly off their rockers. In recounting my instances of run-ins with armageddon fanatics, perhaps I have found a thread of reciprocation to this seemingly ominous question aforementioned.

In other words, I think I can ask the very same that I've been asked.

My mother, feeding off the suspicious and superstitious Chinese tell-tale personality of generations, has been the source of amusement and fueler of fear for me when it comes to armageddon and its link to current events. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and the great tsunami--all of which killed so many people--my mother went around whispering during news hours, "The world is changing."

The random snows in Califonia and the hot 70 degree winters in Maryland wrought a sense of fear in my mother and inadvertently in me, for she, as I'm sure many others around the world did, considered that perhaps these natural disasters and terrorist attacks were a sure-fire sign of man turning on man and the world coming to an end.

And then she blurts, "It's because of Bush."

I laughed at this interpretation, but according to Chinese superstition, the gods easily invoke their wraths of fury at world/kingdom leaders through natural causes. And of course, even the Christian legacy will proclaim the same with sinners, concluding the fate of the world with an ever frightening purge.

Is she crazy? Not at all. My mother is a very grounded, very sane, very reasonable woman. Her notion of world karma, however, is easily transferrable, easily corruptable simply through delivery. Take, for example, an experience of mine last month on the metro:

Every morning I catch the subway train to Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. As I was sitting on the train waiting for people to board at one of the many stops en route, I distinctively heard the blow of a horn. Boarding the train was a black man with a graying beard and ratty, khaki-colored clothes. He was fully equipped with a booming voice and a large horn. This horn was unlike an animal's horn and certainly not like the brass instruments that we're so accustomed to...but a full-fledged horn. It curled into a large arc and measured to be about the length of the man's torso, and when he blew, it sounded reminiscent of a conch shell--except magnified about 30 times.

He blew, startling those around him, and bellowed, "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS NEAR. YOU CAN STILL AVOID EVIL. BUSH IS THE POSSESSED ANTICHRIST." This easily could be a crazy homeless man who cares too much about politics, and yet, the root of his words matched those of my mother's.

Coming from a Communications background, I am quick to remind you that the medium is the message. He prescribes his epiphany in an insane way, he is seen as insane. My mother...only mildly insane (although if you REALLY knew her, you'd claim otherwise).

Another instance: I was walking through Downtown Silver Spring and parked on the astroturf was a small crowd of people listening to a man demonstrating with an easel. He had marked on the left side of his board: MONEY + SIN + YOU = GOD. On the left side was a silhouette of a body torso with a red heart and a black hole in the heart. The snippets I caught announced the need for the acceptance of Jesus, but the image I saw was an amateur Fortune 500 lesson.

My point is that en-masse we notice patterns. We seem to respect large gatherings of events. After all, how much more extraordinary did the Virginia Tech massacre seem than your individual downtown murder, despite the fact that there is nothing normal about being shot to death?

En-mass, in hindsight, I noticed the pattern of increased armageddon preachers. Does that mean that armageddon is truly near if these pawns are busy crawling out of their nooks and crannies and stealing our attention? Or are they isolated events, with each individual finding their own revelation that they must warn us of all invisible infractions?

What I found today on the subway was the true message of the Lord. He came in the form of a man--not a very beautiful man, not a very graceful man. I was sleeping on the train and I feel a heavy PLOP in the seat next to me. A large, muscular man with a heavy set jaw and sun glasses was holding a small booklet too flimsy for his large, tan hands. He shot me a clumsy grin and said, "I'll be quiet. Shhh," and allowed me to go back to sleep.

He had on blue sweat pants, sneakers, a light blue muscle shirt and a cap. I stared at his booklet and he leaned in and started to speak to me.

"You see this?" He pointed at a series of black and white pictures memorializing nuclear bombs, wars, battles grounds. Then he flipped the page to a drawing of rolling hills, sunshine and pure nature.

"Wouldn't that be wonderful if the world could be like this? Do you know how it's going to happen?"

"What?" I ased.

"Do you know how it's going to happen?" I shook my head.

"Would you like to find out?" And he gave me the book, telling me he has plenty more. I asked if he was Christian; he said yes, and he tries to be a good one. He told me he was from Washington to take care of his ill 80 year old father. He told me to be safe when I left. I told him to have a good day.

He told me much more in those few moments I had with him--he told me of his kindness, the faultiness that lays in judging a human by their cover, of what God's true message was. God's true message is to simply listen, hope, and spread the quiet moments that he gives us, for in our quiet moments does God speak the loudest. He told me that I would never know if the separate messages I received from armageddon fanatics were individual and unique or not. He told me that they should be, however, a pattern of global significance-that this pattern should be peaceful, horn-less, one in which everybody spreads the word of God, the coming of the Lord, the end of the world as a beautiful merging of heaven and earth. He told me that anybody could find God in any one, anywhere.

I found it in him on my ride to work, he who told me so much but kept his promise--he was quiet...and I still heard him.