McDonalds truck

The toy truck

The toy truck we were shown in class had an emblem of Ronald McDonald and the two golden arches on it. Normally, no person would connect food and toys, but globalization has merged companies and products together in order to market them and earn higher profits. This toy truck is an example of horizontal integration or external synergy, meaning that two corporations (McDonalds and the toy company) work together by combining their products in order to familiarize their demographic further with the product. The contrasting marketing idea to this is vertical integration, where one corporation sells its products in many little subdivisions of that company. An example for this would be Howard Stern’s show, which is on the air for the corporation Viacom, but further products of his, such as his autobiography, are also published by a Viacom company.
Like the McDonalds truck, products are sold by using tricks such as ´under the radar advertisement´, in which the customer doesn’t even realize that something is being advertised to him. In the end, many children will want to buy the truck since their star Ronald is on it, and McDonalds wins more customers through children who buy the truck.