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| Photo Credit: Brandweek |
Brandweek shows how McDonalds has once again set themselves apart from other fast food restaurants by putting a unique twist in their advertising strategy. Imagine this, it is 2 am and you are drunk and hungry. The first thing that comes to mind is that you want food that you could receive as soon as possible, but for cheap since you just spent half of your money at the bar. Well, McDonalds without a doubt will catch your attention, being that they have put up a billboard in Chicago for the regional “Best Fries on the Planet” campaign, that is visible up to three miles. The trouble with this billboard is that it resembles the Tribute in Light, which is the 88 searchlights that are shone into the sky where the World Trade Center site used to be. As the article stated, “instead of a somber memorial to a national tragedy, the McDonald's ad is a shining lure for the sloshed, stumbling and hungry.”
Personally, I believe that McDonalds is on the right track when it comes to making their advertising strategy stick and from others. Not only does it make them stick out, but also it makes the customers attracted to it because of the impact of how appealing it is and that it allows the customers to find the location based on the noticeability. I do not think that McDonalds had any intention of disrespecting the World Trade Center, they were just trying to set themselves apart. Overall, do you think this is a good type of advertising strategy that McDonalds is using, regardless of it resembles the World Trade Center?
I agree with you Nicole on the fact that McDonald's had no intention of disrespecting anyone with this ad. McDonald's simply just wanted to set themselves apart. The problem here is that someone did not do their research well enough.
ReplyDeleteWhoever is in charge of marketing research for McDonald's failed on this project. As a organization you have to take into account these types of things. With global advertising you have to take into account of how different countries will react to certain slogans and advertising, and its the same here with domestic advertising.
The marketing research department for McDonald's should have realized this advertising tool looked too close to a memorial of people who died in the largest tragedy in US history. The 9/11 memorial is a very emotional piece of America, and to some people it probably looks like McDonald's is mocking the memorial. McDonald's should take down the advertising to keep from upsetting anyone else. They would benefit more by keeping those people rather than try to convince drunk people to come eat their food.
McDonald's food is great when you have been consuming alcohol, but I think that McDonald's marketers where a little misguided. There is no need to market McDonald's as "drunk" food, this will not cause more drunk people to eat McDonald's it will only hurt McDonald's reputation. McDonald's has marketed itself as family restaurant, family’s don't want to walk into a restaurant filled with drunk people. McDonald's should be trying to build an image that states that they are healthy. After the movie "SuperSize Me" they offered healthier food options. This counteracts their healthy image. Typically drunk food is greasy and unhealthy. This is unlike McDonald's, I have always considered them marketing geniuses. This is a rare lapse in judgment on McDonald's part.
ReplyDeleteI believe this is a great way to tell consumers about the popularity that McDonalds has received since it was created. They did not wish to disrespect the World Trade Center, they just want to stay fresh in the minds of the consumers and create easier methods for the consumer to satisfy their needs. Even if they have targeted drunk individuals as their target audience doesn't meant that it's a disrespectful, they are catering to the needs of that certain target audience. All companies do this through different categories of people they target. I think this is a gret idea for McDonalds and I believe that it will increase their sales through the ease of discovering McDonald in this busy city.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good marketing approach although the billboard was not completely thought through by the McDonald’s marketing team. It might have offended people but McDonald’s image and sales probably will not suffer from this marketing strategy because they have a tremendous amount of loyalty from their customers. In this day and age marketers have to think outside the box and create a new billboard advertisement. The fries lit up above the billboard sign attract a lot of McDonald’s late night customers which account for a great deal of their revenues.
ReplyDeleteWell they definitely manage to set themselves apart from others again, but I do agree that there intention was not to offend anyone. Unfortunately this is a case of things clearly weren't thought through all the way. If McDonalds used there own source of lighting this would have been great for them.
ReplyDeleteEvent though they did not mean for this to disrespect anyone, it did. As a business you have to take responsibility for that. Because it is coming off that way, they are almost doing more damage than they are helping at this point. It would be wise to take it down and release a public statement of apology of some sort.
Visual at 3 miles away though...that is really impressive. If they use their own light source it could be really effective.
I'm willing to play Devil's advocate here and suggest that maybe whoever suggested this idea for the new McDonald's campaign knew exactly what they were doing but either didn't care or thought that the company was popular enough already, they wouldn't lose business if the campaign was offensive. My question is, how did something like this get approved by so many necesasary people in order to be created? I personally find this new campaign to be incredibly offensive, not only to those who lost their lives on 9/11 but those affected by it and our soldiers overseas. I think Mcdonald's should have been more sensitive when creating this campaign.
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