Search, Mickey D's, Or Coke, Branding Is Powerful

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
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.