Advertising the Current American Epidemic

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The current American epidemic of childhood obesity has been blamed for and on many issues. American children are too sedate, and spend an exorbitant amount of time watching television and playing video games. Our hectic lifestyles have us eating on the fly more often than not, and as such children are eating more processed take out food from restaurants.

This problem of obesity has been, rightly or wrongly, squarely placed on the shoulders of fast food corporations such as McDonalds or Burger Kind. In fact, Disney, a multi-billion dollar corporation and the forerunner of children media and programming has decided to break ties with McDonald's Happy Meal. Some people believed that the break up of the ten-year relationship of cross advertisement of movies and food which has existed between Disney and McDonald's was a health related one, but this in turn in more related to advertising effectiveness than anything else. Disney is cutting back on the number of movies it plans to make each year, and would like to explore optional advertising tie ins with other companies.

This long and fruitful partnership can actually be seen as a positive move for McDonalds as well. McDonalds' officials actually reports that the end of the partnership was a mutual decision and has worked a new deal with DreamWorks pictures which will take place over the next two years (Prynn, 2006). McDonald's will begin tie ins with Dream works pictures beginning with "Shrek 3" in 2008.

McDonald's paid $100 million in royalties and conducted eleven promotions a year for Disney films, videos, and TV shows..." (Abramowitz, 2006). Disney's plan to partner with Burger King for future movies puts paid to the idea that is was simply done to send a message regarding childhood obesity.

McDonalds' themselves have faced the fact that children need to learn a healthy food choice early on to lead healthy and productive lives. It is fallacy to believe that it is up to a fast food corporation to instill diet habits in children, and it should be noted that Disney Theme Parks would continue to have McDonalds on the premises, (Abramowitz, 2006). Ultimately, it is up to parents to teach children about healthy food choices and dictate what children should or should not eat.