Bits: McDonald's Makes Subtle Play for Children Online

  There are few references to food on McWorld, a virtual world created for McDonald’s.

McWorld, a Web site for children sponsored by McDonald’s, offers visitors the chance to create characters, decorate digital treehouses and go on a quest in a virtual world.

French fries, hamburgers and apple pies are nowhere to be seen.

This is the latest in online marketing, where the hope is that a site’s visitor will naturally associate the brand with a pleasurable activity. It is a type of advertising that has less in common with a 30-second television spot than with a product placement in a movie.

It is also a glimpse of the future, said Mark Smale, a senior vice president with Creata, the Australian company that created the site for McDonald’s. Mr. Smale said in an interview that companies are realizing that, when going online, the best strategy is to forgo immediate sales in order to build lasting emotional relationships with children. In that sense, McWorld is a more sophisticated version of the sites that Matt Richtel discusses in an article about the online marketing of food to children.

“It’s not overtly aimed at trying to sell product,” Mr. Smale said. “If it is, the people you’re trying to reach won’t be interested, they won’t be engaged.”

This approach, known as engagement-based marketing, has become an important tool for companies marketing to children. Mr. Smale’s clients also include Kellogg’s, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. At an industry conference in New York in February, about 50 people gathered to hear Mr. Smale talk about Creata’s approach.

Critics see such marketing as an unfair way to manipulate children who may not realize what is going on. And there are parts of McWorld and other food sites that encourage purchases. McWorld prompts children to enter codes from Happy Meal boxes to unlock things like special gear for their online avatars.

Kathryn Montgomery, a communications professor at American University who studies marketing to youth, said it would be more honest if McWorld did feature McDonald’s food. At least then the company’s intentions would be clear.

Modern marketing, she said, “is about kids playing with the brand, making friends with the brand, interacting with the brand and communicating with friends in the branding environment.” But in the end, she said, “it’s all about pushing the product.”

McDonald’s dismisses concerns that children cannot distinguish between entertainment and marketing online. Heather Oldani, a company spokeswoman, said McDonald’s had more than 50 years of experience in communicating with young consumers, and that it followed its own guidelines and those of the industry about what is age-appropriate.

“Our standards are high, both from an industry and self-regulatory perspective. And those standards are consistent across all of our communications, whether online or traditional advertising,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Smale said it would be inappropriate to have a Web site whose sole purpose was to sell food to children. But he said that engaging them with games and other forms of entertainment was different, and entirely acceptable.

Most restrictions imposed on Web sites aimed at children center on privacy. Players on McWorld are anonymous so the site complies with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. But there are no regulations when it comes to pitching products to children under the guise of entertainment, as there are on television.

The limiting factor on how hard to push sales online is whether companies believe they will drive children away, Mr. Smale said. Television viewers learn to tune out commercials during their favorite shows, a strategy that does not work as well when the commercials are embedded into the entertainment itself.

Branded Web sites work for food companies because it is “getting them out of the position of interrupting the fun,” Mr. Smale said. ” They’re part of the fun.”