20/01/08
Ronald McDonald to children: if you get an A in school you get a free Happy Meal! Eat this Spurlock
Posted in Advertising, Marketing, The real world | No Comments » 
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Via boingboing.net I land on an article in Advertising Age about McDonald’s and sick school sponsoring in Florida.
In December 2007, McDonald’s had agreed to sponsor the report-card jackets for the county’s elementary schools (27.000 children) to cover the printing expenses of $1,600.
In exchange the report jackets would carry coupons redeemable in any McDonald’s restaurant, so any student with all A’s and B’s, two or fewer absences, or good behavior in a given academic quarter would be given a free happy meal.
Is this a sort of equal-fat-rights for the more gifted students? As we all know (and so does McDonald’s) there’s a correlation between education level and fast food consumption, so when they grow up, the A students wont be eating as many Bic Macs as the F students. “We’d better get them while they’re still don’t have an education”, must have thought Ronald McDonald.
After more than 2.000 complaints from enraged parents, McDonald’s decided to cancel the campaign. An end to the story that will no doubt make Naomi Klein and Morgan Spurlock happy.