“All Access” Triple Threat: McD’s, Cityline and Mom Bloggers

By on October 27th, 2011
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I don’t want to be that person;  That person who picks on the most obvious multinational for being greedy. That person who picks on moms who are entitled to their own values and just want to make a buck. So, I’m going to try my hardest not to be that person.

You may be familiar with an initiative called McDonald’s All-Access Moms, a partnership between Cityline, McDonalds and three Canadian “Mom bloggers” who won the chance to get a behind-the scenes look at McDonalds’ business practices. Here’s what it says on the site:

Selected as representatives of busy Canadian moms who eat on-the-go with their families and are curious to know how McDonald’s food is made and where it actually comes from, the three McDonald’s All-Access Moms will travel across the country armed with tough questions and a network of parents behind them looking forward to learning about their journey.

So far the group has gone on three McDonald’s excursions:

  • A trip to Chicago to meet “Chef Dan” who creates all of McD’s recipes
  • A potato farm in New Brunswick (where McD’s french fries come from)
  • Cargill, a cattle farm in Alberta (where McD’s beef comes from and one of the world’s largest agribusiness players)

The “All Access Tour” is hosted by Nanny Robina, a Cityline parenting expert, and airs on Cityline. The findings from the tour are also featured on the McD’s hosted All Access site. The mom bloggers also post about their McD adventures on their Twitter, facebook and blogs, sharing their findings with their mom communities.

I won’t provide you with a listing of some of the insights the mommy bloggers have gleaned from the tour so far–I’ll let you read the blogs and tweets for yourself on the All Access Blog (I will admit I’m using all my powers of self control here).

But, let me just point out that the “All Access Tour” is built on a foundation of false transparency. The idea is “we’ll pull back the veil and give you a no holds barred view of McDonald’s”,  but of course there’s nothing transparent about it. Yes, the some of the food comes from farms but that doesn’t make it good.  The truth is that what McDonald’s calls Grilled Chicken is actually this:

Boneless chicken breast meat, water, seasoning (salt, potassium chloride, trehalose, sugar, rice starch, hydrolyzed corn protein, flavour (autolyzed yeast extract, salt, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate), spices, dextrose, garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, carrageenan, chicken fat, dehydrated cooked chicken powder, silicon dioxide, caramel, onion powder, corn maltodextrin), modified rice starch, sodium phosphates. Cooked on a grill lightly seasoned with trans fat free cooking spray (Canola oil, water, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, monoglycerides, potassium sorbate, artificial flavour and colour (annatto, turmeric), citric acid, vitamin A, vitamin D3

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But not one of the All Access Moms will tell you this. This is because the deal between Cityline, McDonald’s and Mommy bloggers is of course a business arrangement. As one Toronto Star article featuring All Access mommy blogger Maureen Dennis (who in the interests of full transparency I know and have worked with) puts it:

Maureen Dennis, founder of seven-year-old Wee Welcome says it’s a matter of business. She has built a network of 40,000 members and has four staff to pay. Yet she’s frequently asked to share her insights and access for nothing, or in exchange for products. “I can’t pay my phone bill with free stuff.”

Because this is a business relationship it cannot be considered free from business interests. There are terms to this employment relationship and those terms render the term “All Access” meaningless.

So what is to be done?

Can we blame Mommy bloggers for paying their bills–even in an unscrupulous manner?  If their networks don’t like how they behave, they can show their distain by leaving the community or making their opinions known. Can we blame McDonald’s for being greedy and wanting to clean up their image, even in a way I think is repulsive? I wouldn’t expect much more.  Can we blame Cityline for….??

After much consideration I actually believe that Cityline is the most culpable party in this whole arrangement. Cityline is complicit in creating a false sense of transparency–the illusion of reality to that gives McDonald’s promise “All Access” the edge it needs. After all, Cityline is a trusted media program with a responsibility to be an honest broker of information.

Cityline is a key partner in the “All Access” triumvirate”  because they  lend an air of  ”journalistic” credibility to the entire endeavour. I find this shameful and beyond reproach.

What do you think about “All Access Moms?” If you were to write a petition or go after someone on a platform like Change.org how would you  position the issue to direct action at the right party in all of this?

I’d really appreciate your input on this because I’d like to do something. I’m just not sure what….yet.

 

 





  • Darlene

    I think most people understand that Cityline is a magazine-style show that has clear biases toward sponsors and advertisers. I don’t believe (I may be wrong, I haven’t watched it in years), they try to present themselves as serious journalism. This is no different than plugging potential  sweat-shop clothing from the Gap on ‘fashion day’.

    I also think any viewer who has read anything about the reality of factory-farms and processed foods would take the whole campaign with a huge grain of salt. So, while I don’t agree with their business practices, I can understand the motivations of McD’s and Cityline.

    What I don’t understand is why the mommy bloggers would compromise their reputations and credibility for a quick buck. There are plenty of other ways to pay the phone bill without sacrificing integrity, which is pretty important to their business model.

  • Lisa Borden

    You know how I feel…they are all to blame, the entire promotion and program is reprehensible. Accomplices are also to point fingers at – anyone who listens, shares, retweets, blogs or applauds any of the parties involved become part of the problem as well in my opinion. 
    We all have trusted voices, whether it is to one, a small group or a large following. It is our duty to use them responsibly and with transparency.
    With regard of who to “go after” publicly, my feeling is also Cityline, for all of the reasons you mention above, plus for not responding to questions, concerns and criticism about it when asked. This by no means that I think that the 3 McDonald’s Moms should be let off the hook – I would like for them to disclose the terms and conditions of their contracts, and to have McDonald’s define what “all-access” really means.
    Lisa Borden

  • Jodi

    Thanks Darlene,
    It’s a good question. My hunch is that these bloggers are betting on the fact that most of their community eats at McD’s and feeds their kids there (even if it’s a sometimes ‘special treat’). Let’s face it, there are plenty of people who eat McD’s–even if we’d like to believe otherwise.

  • Lulu

    A shame that Canadian moms  have to resort to this kind of foolish campaign to make a buck. Sadder if they really believe that what MCdo is doing -  namely making people & the planet  slowly but surely – sick, is just fine and does not create societal long term issues.

    Mcdo s interest in moms and kids is bottom line based. Nothing else.

    Do the moms who agreed to  be the face of this promo realise the negative impact they re creating on children’s health, including their own.

    Or is it that money can buy  everything?

     

  • http://www.hypenotic.com/ Barry A. Martin

    McDonald’s spends big Mcbucks to create the illusion that their margins aren’t created at the expense of our health and resources. As Raj Patel says, we’ll need to decolonize some minds if people are going to move towards sustainable choices.

  • Amanda

    Bravo! for writing this.

  • Jodi

    Thanks Amanda.

  • Mommynow

    I agree that the whole thing is a sham! I’ve worked in marketing for over 20 yrs and I know I have been presented some ‘stretch’ creative in the past. However, I would never has agreed to move forward with this ‘all-acess’ campaign. I find it incredibly insulting that they think that just because they show me a potato from a potato farm and show me the beef from the cattle farm, that that means the product is a good healthy choice for families.  AND I was also very disappointed to see Nanny Robina and CityLine supporting it. Unfortunately, it does seem that it’s all about $$$ in the end and that some of us have lost our integrity.  What a shame!

  • Jen

    No matter how much money McD’s pours into ‘cleaning up’ their image, it will never change the fact that ‘Supersize Me’ proved their food is capable of killing you in less than a month. 
    Food is supposed to make you healthier not kill you quickly. By definition that they serve is poison, not food. 


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