Your Trusted Friend

The author of “Your Trusted Friends,” Eric Schlosser narrated, about a friendship between McDonald’s and Walt Disney that gave them a big advantage at the market industry in the all world. Schlosser started with describing Ray A. Kroc Museum as an old building that remained U.S. history, and a new campus of Hamburger University near by it. The author continued with reflected on similarities between two founders of these corporate giants, Ray Kroc and Walt Disney. They were both born with a year apart in Illinois, and both had ambition to create a new American industry. Kroc and Disney dropped out of high school and late gained education thought out work training experience that companies provided. In their advance, both men knew how to find and motivate the right talent, but the most importantly Disney and Kroc were masterful salesmen in the art of selling things for children. At the beginning, Walt Disney signed licensing agreement with many U.S. firms for selling their product by using Mickey Mouse in their ads in early 1930s.
In 1938 before the opening ceremony for Snow White, Disney made licensing deals to sell toys, books, clothes, and records for the film. In 1954 in his first television series, Disneyland provided updates on construction work at the park. In all of his work, Disney tried to tie the commodities together into friendly patriotic idea to drive the kids’ attention. Ray Kroc on other hand, disposed own experience in radio station hired a gag writer to made a publicity film to get McDonald’s in the news. To take opportunity of a baby boom after World War II, Kroc wanted to create a save and clean place for American kids. By understanding the food test is important Kroc started food industry with reminding people about his show business knowledge. Kroc invited all children who loved McDonald’s commercials to bring their grandparents. Kroc’s first mascot was a winking chef with a hamburger for a head, and later changed it to Bozo’s Circus, a local children’s television show. Kroc hired TV star, Willard Scott, to invent a new clown who can make better a fast restaurant appearance. Scott gave an idea to Kroc for changing the name from Bozo to Ronald McDonald’s. The star was born with a new name, but Willard Scott was gaining overweight and got fired by company. In the late 1960 McDonald’s and Walt Disney declining fortune, kids of the sixties were rebelled them. In answer to that aggression McDonald’s rivaled Mickey Mouse for name recognition. Kroc made plan to create his own Disneyland. Kroc bought land in Los Angeles to build a new Western World park. McDonald’s executives opposed the idea of building Western World because it would divert funds from restaurant business, and they might lose millions. Instead of investing in a large park, McDonald’s industry built Play-lands next to every McDonald’s restaurant in the United State. McDonald’s used everything to drive kid attention, from songs, toys, clowns, to focus sorely on them. The growing children’s advertising has been driven efforts for McDonald’s to increase not just current consumption, but also in the future. McDonald’s advertisers had snatching into children’s dreams for getting idea about their tastes, development, fantasies. These advertisers observed children at the shopping malls, and their artworks. The big restaurant chain industry used children creativity to build a new mascot. Also, internet became useful tool for assembling data about children. Using television adverting with television programs was confusing method for children who cannot comprehend commercial from real purpose. Although the fast-food chains spends billions on television advertising such as conventional ads, and building play-land in these restaurants brought parents and children to spend money because of missing kids play area in many regions in the U.S. Also, the fast-food industry used toy manufactories for giving away simple toys with children’s meal. Distributing numerous versions of toys encouraged many repeating visits by kids and adult collectors to obtain complete sets. For example, happy meal are marketed for children between the ages of three to nine, and many adult collectors bought Teenie Beanie Baby and threw away the food. As some people said, these restaurants distributed for us fast food from cradle to the grade. The competition between fast-food restaurants changed the aspect of toy with some sports leagues stars or some Hollywood movie stars in the past few years. In main time, McDonald’s restaurants started to recruit people inside the industry by changing the official executives. Walt Disney Company signed ten years global marketing agreement with McDonald’s Corporation for McDonald’s exclusive right to studio’s output of film and videos, and gave to Hollywood studio additional advertising for every film in May, 1996. The life’s work of Walt Disney and Ray Kroc come to final phase uniting both companies in perfect synergy where some one can get happy meal in the happiest place on earth.