Page 105 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

Similarly, Coe notes that the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park ‘borrow heavily
from theme park marketing, visitor services, and management concepts’. 59
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McDonald’s

There is evidence of merchandising in McDonald’s as well as theming. It can be
seen in the availability of a wide range of merchandise bearing its logos or main
character, Ronald McDonald. The McDonald’s website has a very large amount of
merchandise for sale, including clothing items like baseball caps and t-shirts to
nostalgia items like cookie jars. The McDonald’s in the Disney Village in Orlando
had a particularly wide range of merchandise when I visited the area in 2000.
Schlosser notes that at the Ray A. Kroc Museum you are forced to walk through
McStore where ‘You can buy bean-bag McBurglar dolls…telephones shaped like
french fries, ties, clocks, key chains, golf bags and duffel bags, jewelry, baby
clothes, lunch boxes, mouse pads, leather jackets, postcards, toy trucks, and much
more, all of it bearing the stamp of McDonald’s.’ 60
Merchandising has been extended by the McKids range of children’s clothing.
Referring to this range, in his Foreign Policy interview, Jack Greenberg (then CEO
of McDonald’s) said: ‘It happens to be licensed to Wal-Mart, but it’s our brand and
we get a royalty for it.’ 61 While merchandising in McDonald’s is by no means as
extensive as in Disney theme parks, there is evidence that the restaurant chain has
incorporated this element of Disneyization.

Sport

Professional sport has succumbed to the attractions of merchandising in that
major clubs and events can be the focus for successful merchandising. Major clubs
in the most popular sports sell wide ranges of merchandise which are sold in their
own shops, sometimes ones that are not attached or close to their stadiums, as
well as through sports shops more generally. Clubs like Manchester United FC,
New York Yankees, Real Madrid, Chicago Bulls, and Dallas Cowboys have their
names and logos on a massive range of merchandise. The same applies to events.
At the time of the Euro ’96 football (soccer) tournament in the UK, it was reck-
oned that £120 million of merchandise would be sold with the tournament’s logo
on it, though the proposal for it to be on condoms was rejected. To give an idea
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of the scale of the growth of merchandising in football and of its significance for
clubs, Kuper has written that Manchester United Football Club ‘tripled its
turnover to £60m over the last five years, largely thanks to merchandising’. 63 In
the early 1980s, merchandising was only a fraction of top clubs’ income but by
64
2001 merchandise sales were just under 40% of income. In English football, mer-
chandising in the form of items bearing a clubs’ crests (especially clothing) has been