Response #1: the image of a brand and its target customers

In our last class we were discussing the meaning of this word and also naming a few famous brands in the United States. A brand is a name, trademark, logo or symbol given to a business to identify a specific product. We mentioned a few examples of brand such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Nike, Victoria’s Secret etc…each of this brands have their own logos and slogan which make them unique and have their own essence and personality; they have different marketing strategies to approach their customers such as coupons, credit cards, gift cards, free samples, grand openings etc…Eric Schlosser, author of “My Trusted Friends” mentioned one strategy that Walt Disney developed to expand Disneyland, this was known as “synergy” which was followed for the infomercials, promoting films, advertisement, etc…today we could see many examples of synergy, some of them were listed in the last class; a classmate said AT&T and Apple, as everyone knows, apple is the creator of the most amazing electronic devices nowadays, and some of people get the new Iphone but they need a telephone company to active it; in this case you can only use this phone with AT&T and if you notice in the TV commercials, there’s always the Apple’s logo and the AT&T logo at the bottom of your screen, this is an example of how two companies merge together which combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. One of the most important things in marketing is to have a target customer. Ray Kroc (owner of MacDonald’s) knew this and started to develop a new way of promotion. He decided that “children would be the new restaurant chain’s target customer”. According to the author Kroc wanted to create a safe and clean all-American place for kids. He knew that promoting McDonald’s for kids was a smart idea; “a child who likes McDonald’s TV commercials and brings her grandparents to our restaurant gives us two more customers” he explained. The creation of character such as McDonald’s mascot Speedee a winking little chef with a hamburger for a head, and probably the most famous clown known by kids, Ronald McDonald, fantastic and utopian world such as Disneyland, and later after McDonaldlandia, are very important factors to keep a fast food brand within the reach of children. The author stays that the bulk of the advertisement directed to children today has an immediate goal; it’s giving them a reason to ask for the product over and over until they get it.

Part of my assignment is to go to a McDonald or Burger King and do some research about the environment, decoration, and the place itself.

I went to Burger king because is near home. The restaurant has two doors I entered by the backdoor which is on 69^th street, the main door is on Northern Blvd. the first thing I saw was a poster in the door promoting their new bacon egg & cheese sandwich part of the breakfast menu, I sat down in the corner and was observing the people, & everything around me; the decoration was colorful but simple, there were white square tables, with some green sticker shaped like a cone, purple and blue stripes all around it, the chairs were in the same colors, there was only one wall decorated with paints (which I liked for my living room) I was surprised there were no posters or any art of burger on the wall, the rest of the walls were covered with large windows giving the place a great natural light. there was a closed space behind me with some tables, chair, and some machines (which I don’t know their function) that place used to be a playground before, but know it is most like a spot for birthdays. In the back part I couldn’t see any promotional material of any kind, and there were no fantasy element in the design of the restaurant; I walked towards the main door which is a big glass door with two mega stickers of Burger King’s logo, on the other side of the door there is a big poster that says “NOW HIRING”. When people first walk in through the main door they will be able to see the counter, there is only two register machines, and there was one person in the front, I could see a girl preparing the food for the drive thru window and three more employees in the back preparing French fries, and sandwiches. There was a big poster in the counter that says “Pinkalicious toys” for girls and boys every time you buy a kid’s meal” then on the other side there were a list of the toys that the girls would get: “pinkalicious hair play”, “pinkalicious star bright”, “War ring comb pinkalicious”, and a “pinkalicious tiara”; the toys for boys were: car curving tony Stewart, rev n’ go tony Stewart. . I was supposed to bring some promotional material with me whatever I could take for free but there was none.

The majority of the customers were families with their kids and almost all of them were getting one of those toys in their meals, some of them were playing around being a little noisy, but that didn’t bothered me since I love kids.

To conclude my research I can say that the strategies mentioned at the beginning of this paper are use in this restaurant too, they use characters to attract kids such as “the king”, toys in the kid’s meal to make the parents buy it, however I could implied that the restaurant is also trying to access any kind of people, its decoration is simple and somehow colorful but also lack of fantasy elements which mostly attract kids.