The ORCA Archives
Work We've Done in the Past   |
Over the past 15 years, ORCA has been blessed with a wide variety of assignments from many clients. Here is some of the work we are particularly proud of:
McDonald's First Children's Meal...
29-years ago, Birk was busy creating it!
Mark Lashly, Stolz Advertising's Sr. VP and McDonald's Account Supervisor and Birk, Stolz's Executive VP and Creative Director sat at a park bench in the St. Louis Zoo and sketched out the first concepts. Birk remembers this vividly because the bees from the nearby refuse cans were quite aggressive that day.
The impetus for the creation of a McDonald's Children's meal was St. Louis, Missouri advertising manager Dick Brams, who in 1977 contracted with both Stolz Advertising Company of St. Louis and Kansas City-based advertising firm Bernstein-Rein and to develop a children's meal that would promote McDonald's as a restaurant for families, specifically those with smaller children.
Stolz Advertising created the original McDonald's children's meal concept several months before Bernstein-Rein and it was known as McDonaldland Fun-To-Go because its mission was also to promote the new drive-through window service that was being introduced to the market at that time.
Brams delayed the introduction of Stolz's concept in St. Louis because he wanted to introduce both concepts simultaneously in St. Louis and Kansas City. Fun-To-Go commercials created by Birk were filmed in St. Louis by Maritz's Communico unit and they featured King Moody, who played Ronald McDonald at the time. The Stolz meal featured the first McDonald's in-meal premiums, Space Invaders.
When the product went "national" out of test in St. Louis and Kansas City, it was called The Happy Meal. Both Stolz Advertising and Bernstein-Rein received a Steuben Crystal Children's Marketing Award from McDonald's founder and CEO Ray Kroc at the McDonald's Agency Convention...Ad Age carried a special tribute advertisement acknowleding the efforts of both firms.