McContent

Who says looks don't matter? This story today is kind of blowing my mind a little bit:

Whether it's french fries or carrots, preschoolers say food tastes better when it comes in a McDonald's wrapper.

It's not the food, it's the brand name. Marketing strongly affects 4-year-olds' food preferences, find Stanford University pediatrics researcher Thomas N. Robinson, M.D., and colleagues.

Robinson and colleagues studied 63 low-income children enrolled in Head Start centers in California. The kids ranged in age from 3 years to 5 years.

Told they were playing a food-tasting game, the kids sat at a table with a screen across the middle. A researcher reached around either side of the screen to put out two identical food samples: slices of a hamburger, french fries, chicken nuggets, milk, or baby carrots.

The only difference between the pairs of food samples was that one came in a plain wrapper, cup, or bag, and the other came in a clean, unused McDonald's wrapper, cup, or bag. The kids were asked whether they liked one of the foods best, or whether they tasted the same.

In all cases, the majority of the kids said the "best" foods were those linked to the McDonald's brand, even though the only differences between the bags were the McDonald's logos (no special advertising materials were used).

Now, somewhere at McDonalds headquarters, the marketing team is leaning back in their chairs, with their feet up on the table, cigars in their mouths and they are laughinggggg! But my brain is still sluggishly trying to process what the rest of us should do with this information. I guess parents will start trying to pass off eggplant and zucchini with McDonalds wrappers (note to McDonalds execs: start selling packages of blank wrappers for this purpose). But how can such a compelling argument for strong brand recognition help out the rest of us?

While I'm still processing the answer to that question, I'm now dedicating myself to strengthening the Are Seven brand, aiming for that ultimate marketing Nirvana: slapping a logo on anything and have people snatch it up like water in a sci-fi movie with a bleak vision of humankind's future. In other words, never really having to work or think again.

I have my new project. Steps one and two: logo and slogan. Suggestions (provided pro bono) welcome.