Pizza, Ice Cream, and Box Tops: Advertising and Brand Loyalty in Elementary School

When I first considered advertising in my schools, my first memory was of the vending machines in my junior and senior high schools. But as I thought more about my time in elementary school I realized that the most prevalent forms of advertising related to food. Every Friday Jacksonwald Elementary served Domino’s pizza for lunch. And every early dismissal before a holiday, when our teachers used class time for movies, the school brought in dixie cups of Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream as movie treats. These two examples stand out in my mind because both were associating food—pizza and ice cream—with fun—celebrating the weekend or a break from school. Because these were traditions, students looked forward to them during the week or school year. Although the school served pizza on other days of the week it reserved Domino’s for Fridays. Similarly, although students could buy ice cream in the cafeteria, it reserved Dairy Queen for special pre-holiday celebrations.

In her article for Tes Magazine, Clark writes about schools collecting box tops or labels for Box Tops for Education. Jacksonwald had collection boxes set up in the school office for people to drop off the labels and tops for points. After reading this article, I checked the Box Tops for Education website and Jacksonwald, in addition to many other schools from my district, still participate in this collection. The site even gives a product list so that people know which products will provide them with labels for collection. You can find the site with the link to the product list here. It makes me wonder if some people are loyal to the brands on this list because they see that those companies support schools through this program.