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Shockingly Provincial. Now on with the rant.
These days the PC thing to attack fast food restaurants for is not labor practices or wages. It is advertising directed at children. Every television sweeps season one of the major networks runs an in depth investigative bit about
childhood obesity. Sometimes it is a one times news item that goes along with some sort of medical announcement. Sometimes we see a series of interviews done over a period of time with parents, doctors and of course the children themselves.
This scares people who make and or sell products that help make children fat. They want to maintain their "child friendly" status. So we see announcements about how different chains are cutting out trans fats. We see corporate pledges to decrease and or eliminate entirely marketing directed to children. Networks like Nickelodeon and Disney start to become somewhat more pickey in what products they will allow to be advertised during their broadcasts.
Then there is some absolute marketing genius over Burger King. He or she saw the writing on the wall. Avenues of marketing like school posters and children's cable stations are disappearing. A new outlet must be found. I betting they were more than a little familiar with
Max Barry's Syrup and
Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking. They decided to go right to where the kids live: Video Games.
Burger king is selling not one, not even two, but three games that can be played on the xbox or xbox 360 systems. They are selling these games for the unbelievably low price of 3.99 with the purchase of a value meal. So when the cheap relative wants to buy the kid something fun yet cheap this holiday season it's just a quick trip to BK for a couple thousand calories and a dirt cheap game. It doesn't really matter how good these games are, they cost less than a tenth of what any other new game goes for on the shelf (59.99) Adults will buy em because they are so cheap and children will play em, if only for a little while, because it's something they haven't played before.
From what I've seen most of the games feature the Burger King (the plastic guy in the crown. I'm not sure how much of an advertisement for the store he actually is, but I'm sure it will boost revenue and projected revenue. (whatever that really means). I wonder how long before we have games like Starbucks Sim Barista. Maybe a new grand theft auto where you sell drugs out of a Taco Bell drive up window. British Petroleum Oil Drilling Extravaganza.
I've seen the Future[TM].
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