Search, Mickey D's, Or Coke, Branding Is Powerful
Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer
Here's a challenge for you: raise a child unexposed to branding.
Good luck with it. This article isn't about parenting, though,
it's about the power of the brand. A recent study revealed
preschoolers think even milk and carrots wrapped up with
McDonald's golden arches tastes better.
I have a love-hate relationship with McDonald's. I dig their food
- fast, cheap, addictive. Addictive is the operative word because
no company is better at hooking you at a young age. One of the
earliest symbols recognized by children are the arches and
toddlers will identify them as McDonald's before they identify
them as the letter "M."
McDonald's means something to them. Something very special.
Worse, Mickey D's sort of cheats with carefully engineered smells
that trigger pleasure sensors in the brain, colors immediately
associated with fatty goodness, reported low levels of butane in
the nuggets as preservatives (source on that is Digg.com, so take
it for what it's worth), magical clowns and playgrounds on the
premises, and seats crafted to be comfortable for something like
exactly 14 minutes - enough time for you to eat and get the hell
out of there.
But I've digressed. Like I said, this is an article about the power
of branding.
Recently, a study on search engines showed that though search
results presented to participants were the same, and even though
the participants on the whole preferred Google in their daily lives,
the majority of them selected Yahoo as the best search engine in
the study, effectively choosing a logo over reality.
This seemed to prove my point that branding does indeed have an
effect in online marketing, and a effect on the ROI, though many
have argued that presence cannot compare to clicks and conversions
- a word of caution, though, like a 401(k) branding payoff is not
immediate. It is about getting your brand ingrained into the
collective psyche, just like McDonald's has (woefully) blisteringly
and effectively done over the past 40 years.
Coke has a similar dominance in taste tests, even though when the
brand was absent, participants exhibited no preference.
In this study, as reported by MercuryNews (careful, they're nosy
in San Jose; surprising they don't ask for a DNA sample on the
registration page), kids between 3 and 5 years old were given
identical food samples, hamburgers, French fries, chicken nuggets,
carrots, and milk. Forty-four percent preferred McDonald's wrapped
carrots.
At home, my stepson doesn't allow me to buy generic Captain Crunch.
Won't it, swears there's a difference. As this study illustrates
though, a strong brand can altar even the taste buds.
Technology and Marketing Law Blog's Eric Goldman relays a similar
story, except this one involves Dora the Explorer:
"We had our own recent first-hand experience with the power
of brands over kids. We normally don't shop in the "traditional"
grocery stores like Safeway; the vast bulk of our grocery dollars
go to Trader Joe's or the farmers' markets."
"However, on a recent vacation, we stopped into a traditional
grocery store (the Save Mart in Angels Camp), and my 2-year-old
daughter Dina went absolutely bonkers."
"She's a fan of Dora the Explorer, and it turns out that there
are an amazing number of Dora-branded products available in the
traditional grocery store--we as parents had blissfully ignored
these products, but they shone like bright beacons to our otherwise
unexposed/inexperienced daughter."
"Through some disciplined parenting, we escaped with a single
Dora-branded pack of yogurt...and a vow never to go back to
traditional groceries!"
I've seen the same thing happen with Disney-branded food.
Ah, well, selling is what has created this country of ours, and
it's doubtful that will change. So the moral of the story, among
several, for the online marketer's purposes, branding is a
powerful, powerful agent for the seller. Just look at what the
big boys have done with it.
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