PHAI Online - The Public Health Advocacy Institute
Posts Tagged ‘Happy Meal’
PHAI Publishes Legal Issue Brief on Digital Viral Food Marketing to Kids
Friday, March 8th, 2013
Food companies used viral digital marketing tactics, such as “tell-a-friend” web campaigns, to induce children to share e-mail addresses of their friends and spread brand advertising of unhealthy foods among their peers. Even very young children are targeted by these campaigns, which may be considered unfair and deceptive and in violation of state consumer protection laws.
PHAI has prepared a legal issue brief on this topic for state attorneys general as well as stakeholders in children’s health and privacy. The brief explains the tactics that are used and suggests ways that they can be addressed, particularly under state law.
This work was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Eating Research Program (#69293).
PHAI joins the Center for Digital Democracy and others in complaint to FTC over children’s websites’ “Tell-A-Friend” tactics
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012
Today the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston has joined a coalition of children’s, health, privacy and consumer advocacy organizations in a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against several children’s websites for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The offending children’s websites use a “Tell-A-Friend” feature to induce children to provide e-mail addresses of their peers. The websites involved include McDonald’s HappyMeal.com, General Mills’ ReesesPuffs.com and TrixWorld.com, Doctor’s Associates’ SubwayKids.com, Viacom’s Nick.com, and Turner Broadcasting’s CartoonNetwork.com.
The Tell-A-Friend tactic uses a game or other child-targeted activity as a way to engage children in an immersive marketing experience and then directs users to share the activity with friends by entering multiple e-mail addresses. Those children will receive an e-mail that may or may not appear to be from their friend urging them to go to a child-targeted marketing website. This viral marketing tactic creates and reinforces brand awareness providing value to the advertiser. All of this occurs without prompts for any parental consent and, in McDonald’s case, may involve distributing a photograph of the child taken by webcam to recipients of the e-mail message.
Mark Gottlieb, Executive Director of PHAI, noted that, “COPPA was enacted by Congress to protect children under 13 from divulging any personal information to commercial interests on the Internet without the consent of a parent. By inducing young kids to provide the e-mail addresses of their peers, the companies involved here are certainly violating the spirit of COPPA and, it would appear, the letter of the law as well through these “Tell-A-Friend” practices. This is something that state attorneys general could also investigate under their consumer protection authority because these tactics are unfair and deceptive.”
In addition to the Center for Digital Democracy which has published the complaints on its website, PHAI was joined by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Berkeley Media Studies Group, Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood, Center for Media Justice, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children Now, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, ChangeLab Solutions, Global Action Project, Media Literacy Project, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Public Citizen, and the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University.
The Cost of McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
By Cara Wilking, Staff Attorney
The passage of San Francisco’s Healthy Food Incentives Ordinance and McDonald’s recent decision to “comply” with the law by charging 10 cents in order to be able to include toys with meals that do not meet minimal nutritional criteria has engendered a lot of public debate. The following table summarizes information from a 2005 Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board decision with Happy Meal cost information from the period between 1999 and 2001:
Toy, Food, Condiment & Paper Costs to McDonald’s Restaraunts of Massachusetts (1999-2001) in US Dollars
|
|
Hamburger Happy Meal |
Cheese-burger Happy Meal |
4-piece McNugget Happy Meal |
Happy Meal Toy Only |
| Toy cost |
0.43 |
0.4299 |
0.4299 |
0.43 |
| Food cost |
0.3104 |
0.3561 |
0.4147 |
|
| Condiment cost |
0.0162 |
0.0162 |
0.0476 (average) |
|
| Paper cost |
0.0434 |
0.0340 |
0.049 |
|
| Total cost |
0.8000 |
0.8362 |
0.9412 |
|
| Menu Price |
1.99 |
2.39 |
2.69 |
1.69 |
For the periods covered, McDonald’s reported that it paid its toy supplier 43 cents per toy. The total cost to McDonald’s for the toy and packaging of the Happy Meals was greater than the cost of food for each Happy Meal type. McDonald’s included a toy with every Happy Meal and sold the toys separately for a retail price of $1.69. The company noted that it had a dedicated key on its registers in order to process separate toy sales.
In an issue advertisement run by McDonald’s explaining its 10 cent Happy Meal toy plan, the company wrote: “we feel a responsibility to our customers – including parents…who would like to have the option of purchasing…[a toy] separately for their kids.” In reality, prior to the ordinance all customers, including parents, had the option to purchase a toy separate from a Happy Meal. To comply with the letter and the spirit of San Francisco’s ordinance, McDonald’s could have stopped putting toys in with Happy Meals that did not meet nutritional criteria. Customers wanting to buy a toy separately, including parents, would then be treated as they always have been—rung up using the dedicated register key and charged the retail price of the toy.
The good news is that, as Michele Simon points out, there is an easy legal fix to the 10 cent toy strategy. In the short term, McDonald’s response amounts to an incredible missed opportunity to break away from a business model whereby the inedible portion of its children’s meals cost more to produce than the edible portion. The cost spent on toys could be spent to improve the nutritional profile of its children’s menu. The result could have been less trash in the form of discarded toys, a boon to fruit and vegetable producers all over the United States who supply McDonald’s, and, most importantly, healthier kids.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PESTER POWER MARKETING STRATEGIES PLEASE SEE OUR PESTER POWER ISSUE BRIEF.
Coca-Cola Unscathed by Happy Meal Changes?
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
1.3 ounces of french fries are out. Caramel dipping sauce is out. A few apple slices are in. Sugary drinks, however, appear to be fully in the mix if not more so now. The 12 oz. “child’s size” Happy Meal soft drink, ranging from 110-120 calories for the non-diet carbonated options, remains the same. The new chocolate milk option has 170 calories and 25 grams of sugar. To put that into perspective, the container of caramel dipping sauce that will no longer be offered has 70 calories and 9 grams of sugar. As the fountain syrup supplier for McDonald’s, The Coca-Cola Company must be rather pleased that McDonald’s made no overt change to its default drink option for its “most popular” Happy Meal combinations–soda. Chocolate milk may compete with soda, but for parents concerned about calories McDonald’s has managed to position its Coca-Cola brand Happy Meal soda offerings as lower calorie alternatives to the flavored milk. Makes one wonder whether The Coca-Cola Company is whistling “badda ba, ba ba, I’m lovin’ it” in response to McDonald’s Happy Meal menu changes.
McDonald’s Happy Meals with Soda & Fries Still the “Most Popular” Meal Combinations
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
by Cara Wilking, J.D.
The National Restaurant Association announced last week that a number of chain restaurants will be offering healthier children’s meal menu options. McDonald’s has opted not to participate in the initiative. Likely it will point to the fact that it already offers apple slices and milk and that it only advertises the healthier versions of its Happy Meals. These steps, however, do not appear to have translated into making its healthier Happy Meal combinations its most popular Happy Meal combinations.
In a letter dated June 7, 2011, McDonald’s touted its range of children’s menu options and included fact sheets providing nutritional information for its children’s meals. The fact sheets feature six Happy Meal combinations and state that the meal combinations pictured “represent two advertised meals, three most popular meals and Cheeseburger, Apple Dippers and low-fat milk meal.” According to McDonald’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative advertising pledge its “advertised meals” are the 4-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal with apple dippers, low fat caramel dip and a jug of 1% low fat white milk and the Hamburger Happy Meal with apple dippers, low fat caramel dip and a jug of 1% low fat white milk. By process of elimination, the three “most popular” meal combinations emerge as:
- McDonald’s Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with small french fries and a 12 oz. soft drink,
- McDonald’s Hamburger Happy Meal with small french fries and a 12 oz. soft drink, and
- McDonald’s Cheeseburger Happy Meal with small french fries and a 12 oz. soft drink.*
The three most popular combinations include french fries and soda despite the fact that McDonald’s only advertises combinations with apple slices and milk. This is most likely because these less healthy options remain the default when filling Happy Meal orders. If McDonald’s is serious about child health it should take real measures to ensure that its healthiest Happy Meal options become its most popular options.
*McDonald’s was contacted last week to confirm this interpretation of its fact sheets and has yet to do so.
