One year ago today we wrote about protesters calling for the retirement of McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald. And, for a while, he did seem to be less omnipresent. But that was then. The hamburger-pushing clown is back in a new set of McDonald's ads starting to air next week and now he wants to make some home movies for your kids. Naturally, some parents groups that were already concerned about obese American children are not amused.
One of the new commercials show Ronald going to door-to-door to deliver small children "Ronaldgrams" before inviting them to visit happymeal.com to send their own (just first "ask your parents permission"). The other shows Ronald framing pictures of himself and random passersby. Similar to the other one it offers children a chance to "picture yourself with Ronald" on the same website, and again reminds kids to ask for permission first.
Deborah Lapidus, campaign director of Corporate Accountability International, doesn't like the new ads: "If McDonald's really stands behind its contention that this is an issue of 'parental choice,' then why is it marketing directly to kids and not parents?" We hope she was at least half joking when she asked that.
"Parents are going crazy trying to deal with the Internet and social networking and their kids," advertising and clinical psychologist Carol Moog fretted to USA Today. "Why would I want my kid to do this?"
McDonald's is by no means the first big chain to try out the personalized video thing. But beyond the fact that there is something odd about obesity-enabling clown pushing cutesy message on children, we honestly wish the site they made were a little better produced.
When you go to the McDonald's Happy Meal site, users are offered a chance to make a video for their friends for a variety of reasons (Valentine's Day, Birthday's, Congratulations) and then customize them with names and messages. But there really isn't much variety to choose from. And when we tried it and put in our name as Gothamist we were politely asked to "Please Enter a Better Name." The final videos are exactly the canned bits of children's clowning around you would expect from the mascot of an international food giant. Which is to say, Subservient Chicken, these are not.
