Finding McDonald's

Twenty years ago, shortly after the attack of 9/11 –?I saw an ad campaign for a woefully lost McDonalds brand: "Expect the Unexpected."

Surprised at the tone-deafness, I penned an opinion piece –?picked-up by BrandWeek magazine. (And notably, for a subsequent few years, always got a nice Christmas card from an executive at Burger King!)

Since then, McDonalds has rediscovered its – wait for it, wait for it – secret sauce. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Now vastly improving its retail presence, integrating technology, trimming the menu and slashing its advertising, its substantially back to "McDonalds."

A lesson in knowing why customers love you. And why they don't.

(BrandWeek –?2001)

Just when one would think never to be surprised to find a monolithic brand lose touch with the promise to its customers, we see yet another McDonald’s campaign.

The magic of McDonald’s was that no matter where you traveled, it was delightfully and comfortingly the same. Their burgers were good, but we didn’t really consider them “burgers.” They were "McDonald’s" — and millions of people liked them.

That is why the long trajectory of McDonald’s advertising and promotional campaigns is puzzling. Most recently, the folks at McD’s corporate have treated us to fabulous new menu items [Eggs Benedict!] and challenged us to imagine the delight and surprise that awaits us under the Golden Arches [Tacos!].?

Why, McDonald’s will be a voyage of new discovery and unfound wonders in taste!

Huh? We’re talkin’ McDonald’s, right?

Attention HQ executives at Oak Brook: We go to your restaurants because, quite specifically, we don’t want a surprise. We want McDonald’s. We want the McDonald’s of “Food, Folks and fun,” not McTacos, Arch Deluxe and Bratwursts. In limited arenas of their lives, your customers embrace “sameness” as an antidote to their increasingly confounding world. People love McDonald’s, but for Kroc’s sake — stick to doing “McDonald’s!”

McDonald’s equity as a brand will continue to slide down faster than a saucy McRib with the continued organizational obsession on what fajita salad the other guy if offering. The very fact that McDonald’s challenges us to think about food selections it can’t possible “own” in our minds invites comparison to other franchise alternatives to which, by most measures, McDonald’s would lose in a taste test.

Fact is: People go to McDonald’s because of it ubiquity. We started going there as kids, and now we take our kids there. McDonald’s is not cognitive, it is reflexive. We treasure not having to think about it. It just “is.”

Micky-D’s will prevail, provided the stores stay clean and the food remains steady. Consistency is king, variation the enemy. No new clever combination of meat and cheese products can transcend intolerance for a grimy table.

It is possible that McDonald’s marketing is based on an assumption of taste superiority. Perhaps lying in that fizzy corporate logic, “If we are the No. 1 burger restaurant, then we must have the best burgers.” And, then, quite logically, they perceive that those quality associations can be transferred to new menu items.

Wrong.

To whoever cooked-up this mess: If you would really “Love to See You Smile,” please don’t try to compete on food. We don’t come to the Golden Arches on the merits of taste tantalization and culinary delight. We prize your brand on friendliness, cleanliness, consistency and convenience. They are value propositions that you’ve abdicated in recent years and — luckily — competitors have neglected to capture.

Exactly how many failed menu concepts does it take before all of those development dollars are instead plowed into the value proposition? While there are compelling reasons to assess menu price points, the constant re-sizing and re-bundling of products in a dizzying array of Value Meals has virtually eliminated the subtle value of the enterprise — the ease and uniformity of the experience.

Can’t more of the effort and resources spent modeling food and paper cost/margins in the 6-pc. McNugget Meal be re-directed to a sustainable customer benefit? How about foot-operated trash-bin doors, or slightly larger ketchup packages? Endless opportunity and reward awaits the executive whose focus is on all that McDonald’s can do, instead of simply trumping what Burger King is serving across the street.

Transport people to a McDonald’s that doesn’t mask its employees with a cacophony of Disney promos. Raise the price of our combo meals by 20 cents and fund a solution to the greasy skating ring by the fry bin. Take the 30-foot inflatable McFlurry off the roof and pay performance bonuses.?

Frankly, “We’d Love to See THEM Smile!”

Advertising creative that centers on recurring surprise can be a triumph of indiscretion and poor timing. Not only does this campaign fail to deliver on the brand’s promise, it also follows closely on the hooves of news to vegetarians that the company’s French fries were “naturally flavored” with animal parts. Another surprise indeed.

Watching McDonald’s bring attitude and sass to their brand is like watching your mom hit the dating scene — weird and awkward, if not somewhat surreal.

The antecedent of the McDonald’s brand was exquisite performance, not their ads and test kitchens. As long as Ronald McDonald’s brand is articulated as mere “creative management,” this clowning will continue to dilute the loyalty of those who remember the brand, and fail to satisfy those who can’t differentiate it.

This is an organization that once gave a complimentary meal for neglecting to bag a “to-go” item as lowly as a straw or napkin. Now, they are grasping for straws in vain attempts to re-awaken the brand through nifty menu concepts and hollow ads, while neglecting the customer-facing performance concepts that have underpinned their success to date.

McDonald’s is attempting to resolve the fickleness of a customer base through menu exploration, which is undeniably tempting in an increasingly saturated and fractionalized market. However, the strength of their brand is inversely proportional to its scope. Continued adventures at the margins of the menu will do little to preserve [let alone build] market share for the folks who were once well-regarded as trusted stewards of brand equity.