BlogEntry4

           The chapter “Your Trusted Friend” from Eric Schlosser’s bestseller Fast Food Nation, presents the fate of Roy A. Kroc, the man who started McDonald’s Corporation, and Walt Disney, the founder of Disneyland. The author shows how these businessmen achieved their success by directing advertisements to children.

In this chapter, Schlosser reveals that Kroc and Disney served together in the military during World War I, and they shared the same technological and political views. But of these two, Disney achieved success as a first, thanks to his movie industry and amusement park for children called Disneyland. According to Schlosser, Kroc admire Disney’s achievements and to built his own enterprise he bought the rights to franchise McDonald’s restaurant. Moreover, Kroc forced the bill that allowed McDonald’s restaurants to reduce minimum wages for teen employees. Soon both Kroc and Disney managed huge companies that were selling not only food or entertainment but also many other products such as toys and clothes for children.

As Schlosser shows in chapter “Your Trusted Friend”, Kroc and Disney wanted their brands were known by children and their parents in whole America. To attract children Disney created Mickey Mouse, and Kroc invented Ronald McDonald. McDonald’s clown became a hit among young generation, and he brought the restaurants a lot of benefits in conjunction with the newly opened McDonald’s Playgrounds. Moreover, to entice consumers, McDonalds’s implemented in its restaurants other strategies such as colorful environment or food wrapped up like a small gift.

In the chapter “Your Trusted Friend” Schlosser describes, how fast food restaurants collect information about children’s preferences through the Internet, shopping mall’s surveys, or even by analyzing children’s artwork. Food industry devote a lot of time and money for the researches because this analysis will help them create ads directed at children who will nag their parent to buy them advertised products. As Schlosser shows, advertising companies reached also public schools  that face financial problems. Food companies offer money and school material aids in exchange for the distribution of promotional posters, or sale of their products in school cafeterias. Schlosser points, that schools are in a difficult situation when they have to choice between raising funds for education and their students health.