Latest Outrage

There are two stacks of newspapers on my desk. Stack one is flagged for immediate reading, ostensibly because there is information pertinent to my business in them. Stack two contains the same newspapers, but ones without flagged articles in them. This morning I'm finally getting to stack number two. Usually, I get through this pile without reading very much. I mean, who wants to read a three week old Wall Street Journal?

Today though, I found a diamond in the rough. The April 4 issue of Crain's Chicago Business contains an article called "Did Somebody Sing McDonald's? - 'Adversongs urges fast food into hip-hop lyrics'" Now since I detest McDonald's, this one caught my eye.

Because I can't link to this article online (paid subscribers only, don'tcha know), I'll have to give you the gist. "McDonald's Corporation has hired entertainment marketing firm Maven Strategies to encourage hip-hop artists to integrate the Big Mac Sandwich into their songs." Rappers are going to be paid to sing about the Big Mac in some way. These songs should start hitting the airwaves sometime this summer.

Talk about exploiting children! It isn't enough that commercial jingles get in their little minds now, is it? I can still remember jingles from the early 70's when I was growing up. (There are lots of chewy Rollos in a roll for you, if you're choosy about what you chew) Those things are powerful. Commercials on the radio have been mimicking the sound of popular music for some time now, but those were advertisements. Advertising now is going to be the main event.

When Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood confronted McDonalds with the argument that the 'adversongs' were deceptive because children wouldn't necessarily know that the artists were being paid to slide their product into their songs, McDonalds came up with the following response: "This is where brand relevance has gone and we have great confidence that a consumer understands this. (Consumers are) cognizant of this as a placement in brand strategy . . . We believe that the McDonald's brand is so omnipresent already in America that having it in music, having it in TV, having it in the movies is no more intrusive than anything else children experience nowadays."

That's like arguing that there are so many dangers in the life of a child, such as falling down the stairs, getting hit by a car, accidentally drinking bleach, and getting mercury poisoning from fish,that letting them carry handguns isn't going to make a difference in terms of their safety. And please, what 9 year old child knows that products are placed into movies as advertising? They believe that E.T. was real, and liked Reeses Pieces because he liked them. Not because George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were paid to place the candy in the movie somehow.

To encourage the artists to produce a hit, they will be paid from $1-$5 each time their song is played on the radio. To tap into this sticky sweet deal, the artists' work would have to be approved by McDonalds.

Anyone wanna argue with me now that McDonald's is evil?