Filed under: McDonald's, Advertising & Marketing, Food & Beverage, Restaurants
What you see in a food ad may not be what you actually get but, rather, what the company wants you to think is available. For example, fast food gets its own food stylist before appearing in an ad. Finding exactly the right pickles, the best angle, the most flattering lighting, and carefully sculpting the drips of ketchup can make a burger go from flat disk to luscious dish.
Sometimes the company wants to sell something else. McDonald's (MCD) has a new campaign: Pay with Lovin', as MoneyTalkNews reports. A million customers will be picked at random up until Valentine's Day to pay for their orders with only a "random act of Lovin'," as the promotion rules explain. That might include fist bumping one of the employees, calling a loved one, blowing a kiss, or participating in a family group hug.
What McDonald's is selling here is a connection between the company and consumers, but that image is about as realistic as the doctored burger. Sales keep falling, as DailyFinance has previously reported, and Mickey D's is struggling to wipe away negative perceptions about its food and relevance. Previous attempts to do so by publicly discussing ingredients and methods of making products like Chicken Nuggets have backfired as the explanations were anything but appetizing, according to AOL Jobs.
An attempt to push brand shouldn't be surprising, as the company fired its previous CEO Don Thompson and installed Chief Brand Officer Steve Easterbrook as top executive, as the Associated Press reported last month. However, brand is tricky to promote. More than a veneer, it has to involve everything about a company to really work. Such a campaign can go wrong when some customers refuse to participate, as happened in Florida as reported by the Tampa Tribune. And as The Street notes, McDonald's needs to deliver more than hugs and fist bumps.
The Lovin' campaign has the real possibility as coming across as a desperate quick-fix attempt by McDonald's to be loved by consumers when the chain is no longer part of cultural identity, as Vancouver Sun columnist Shelley Fralic pointed out.The problem is that once inside the restaurant, those same consumers may well be reminded of why they don't like McDonald's in the first place, such as the absence of healthy alternatives, slow lines, greasy-smelling restaurants and a huge menu that continues to be stuffed with classic calorie bombs.
McDonald's is no longer a cheap place to take the family and the same sums dropped on its burgers and fries might also buy a meal at any of a number of competitors. Kids don't have an association with going to golden arches and, so, grow up already disaffected.Ask any five-year-old today who the Hamburglar is and you're likely to get a blank stare, as they scan their memory banks for the names of Lego characters, Skylander fighters, SpongeBob protagonists and Stampylongnose references that might offer a clue.
And that, in a nutshell, is the trouble with McDonald's.
Hammered by questions about food and questions of whether locations shortchange workers' pay, as AOL Jobs has reported, the company may not appear like a locus of love to consumers. That's something brief campaigns and videos aren't about to change.