McDonald's fast food chain, which was born in p>1955, has developed into a multinational company with 31,111 branches all over the world. McDonald's is the world's first brand in the catering industry. At the beginning of the year, McDonald's ranked second among the top 111 most influential brands in the world in 2113, which was launched by the world brand laboratory, an internationally renowned brand research institution.
The success of McDonald's is due to its founder's creation of a business model that meets the requirements of the times, and its rapid replication and expansion through the formulation of unified and standardized standards. In the 1961s and 1971s, when the United States entered the stage of rapid economic development, the pace of people's life and work accelerated, and the time for eating became shorter and shorter. Especially after individuals owned a large number of cars, the demand for quick meals on the way appeared, and McDonald's fast food restaurants set up at some airports and expressway intersections met people's needs. With the rapid development of American economy, McDonald's has achieved great success, which has a certain political and cultural significance. People regard it as representing the national image of the United States. At the same time, being able to eat at McDonald's is regarded as one of the lifestyle characteristics of the middle class. In the early development process, McDonald's gradually formed a CI system with strong characteristics of American CI theory, with red and yellow as the basic tone and M as the brand symbol. The brand connotation of McDonald's includes its product quality, product market positioning, brand culture, product standardized production and quality assurance mechanism, brand image promotion, franchise market expansion model and so on. With its unique successful business model, McDonald's has won the first place in the world's catering industry, attracted strong attention from the world, and became a hot topic for people to talk about, which enabled the brand to spread rapidly. Many people knew McDonald's in books and movies before they met McDonald's, so when McDonald's entered the new market, it was often crowded with customers. For example, in China, when McDonald's landed in Beijing and Shanghai, more than 11,111 customers visited the single store that day. In contrast, KFC is not so lucky. As far as brand influence is concerned, it has always been in the shadow of McDonald's aura, highlighting the different opportunities between the boss and the second child.
With the end of the industrial age and the changes of people's cultural psychology, the commercial image of McDonald's has attracted many criticisms. In order to attract customers, McDonald's regards children as the main target group, and has established a humorous image of McDonald's uncle. It is this wrong positioning that makes McDonald's performance decline continuously from 1998, and its stock has shrunk by 71% in a few years. Since the second half of 2113, McDonald's has begun to take teenagers as its main target group.
As a world-class brand giant, McDonald's has invested a lot of money in brand communication, but there are a lot of failures due to improper operation. The fundamental reason is that the enterprise itself ignores the psychological research of consumers, forcibly instills information that it thinks is valuable to consumers, and ignores the psychological reaction of consumers. To paraphrase a classic saying once said by an American entrepreneur, "I know that half of my advertising expenses are wasted, but unfortunately I still don't know which half", half or more of McDonald's advertising expenses are wasted on complacency and self-appreciation.
unify the global publicity strategy, ignoring the differences between regions and countries
As a multinational company with extensive influence in the world, McDonald's naturally adopts an undifferentiated brand publicity strategy, which can certainly gain the advantage of scale, but the effect is often unsatisfactory due to the differences in cultural, psychological and aesthetic customs among countries. For example, there are a lot of funny scenes in McDonald's commercials, which may be in line with the appreciation habits of some American audiences, but it may not be suitable for rational and pragmatic oriental consumers; McDonald's employs some big-name sports stars as brand spokespersons. These stars and their sports may be sought after by many people in the United States, but they may not be popular in other countries. McDonald's fast food restaurant in developed countries in Europe and America may only be a middle and low-end restaurant, and its customers are blue-collar and other low-income consumers, but in developing countries it is a middle and high-end restaurant, and most of the visitors are white-collar workers with higher income and higher education. Obviously, their values and aesthetic habits will not be the same. Different races have different tastes. McDonald's food is mainly beef, while orientals are more interested in chicken. Even in McDonald's, the sales volume of chicken is seven times that of beef, which is an embarrassing fact that operators are unwilling to face. McDonald's intentionally or unintentionally played up the cultural concepts and values of the United States in the process of brand promotion, which caused people's resentment in some countries with strong national consciousness. The stubborn strategy of global unification is the fundamental reason why it encounters resistance in some countries and restricts its expansion in the world.
brand positioning is not accurate, and publicity pays attention to one thing and loses another.
McDonald's has taken children as its target group for a long time. For this reason, they have created the image of Uncle McDonald's, established a children's playground in the restaurant, created a large number of cartoon characters and games through literary works and electronic technology, and often sent people to distribute small gifts with the M logo to children in parks and kindergartens, hoping to attract children-centered family consumers. Although the promotion activities are wonderful, the results are disappointing, and the proportion of children in customers is surprisingly low. The reason is that children have no self-consumption ability and their influence on family consumption decision-making is very limited. The harm of this strategy was recognized by the management only after McDonald's gradually stepped into difficulties, which made them determined to shift the focus of publicity to teenagers. In addition, McDonald's, as a service organization engaged in providing convenient fast food, is the most obvious manifestation of its improper grasp of its own positioning and consumer positioning in order to carry out diversification and operate children's wear which is far from its brand attributes.
The advertising concept is outdated and the advertising performance is poor
The advertising concept of McDonald's still stays in the expression of VI (visual CI) symbols with strong American characteristics and almost the same business information infusion, and the expression mode is the funny expansion plot of the West plus simple commodity promotion information. For example, in a TV advertisement, a couple was sitting in the AD with a child, and the child blew up a balloon. When the balloon became bigger, he picked up his body, and his father grabbed him. Narrator: It's not surprising. Because of McDonald's, the double-decker cheeseburger only costs six yuan. This kind of funny advertisements that seem to be unique in creativity can win the curiosity of the audience if they appear occasionally, but it is not surprising that there are many similar advertisements. After all, being funny is not humor, and being funny is different from being interesting. In the famous advertisement of baby swing, a baby was sitting on a swinging swing. When the swing swung close to the window, the baby grinned, and when the swing moved away from the window, the baby cried. At this moment, when the camera turned, the audience saw a yellow M sign of McDonald's outside the window. Seeing this advertisement, we can't help but ask, will a baby who hasn't eaten or eaten McDonald's know something about McDonald's? Obviously, in order to pursue the effect of grandstanding, the creative person ignores the internal logic of the advertising plot, while the baby who laughs at the sight of M but cries when he doesn't see it has been described as a small animal with only conditioned reflex. "More choices, more happiness" is the brand promise and experience that McDonald's advertisements want to convey, but the expected effect can't be achieved only through the accumulation of some funny plots. Although McDonald's advertising is creative, unique and novel individually, it lacks depth as a whole. Although it can improve brand awareness and achieve the role of strengthening tips, it does not help to enhance brand image and improve brand loyalty and preference. It should be emphasized that the American CI theory, which focuses on strengthening the visual recognition system, has proved unsuitable for Asians, while the Japanese-represented CI system and mind identity's CI system are more likely to succeed.
Ignoring consumers' feelings and lacking crisis public relations strategies
"Customer is God" and "Satisfying customers" seem to be too mediocre slogans, but "Improving customer satisfaction" is indeed the highest business purpose of today's world-class companies. Surprisingly, we found that McDonald's is not very concerned about whether customers are satisfied or not. There is an online survey on McDonald's satisfaction on the famous TOM Finance website, and the results are surprising: < P > There are 6151 votes, accounting for 41.31%; That the general 5563 votes, accounting for 37.98%; 3134 votes thought it was ok, accounting for 21.71%. Only more than 21% of the customers of McDonald's are basically satisfied with it, which shows that despite its high brand awareness, its reputation and loyalty are very low. Restaurant is the most basic and important place for customers to experience and communicate directly with the brand. If the customer's consumption experience is far from their expectations, no matter how well your brand is promoted, it will no longer play a role for them. Recently, there are many examples of customers complaining about McDonald's, such as the "black tea disinfection water incident", "toxic oil leakage incident" and "customer bleeding incident" which have been widely reported by the media. What attracts the public's attention is not only that an internationally renowned enterprise like McDonald's should have such a vicious incident, but also that McDonald's is arrogant and rude when dealing with customer complaints. From a professional point of view, McDonald's avoidance of the Committee in response to the incident shows the shortcomings of its crisis public relations ability, which is very fatal to a famous brand.
McDonald's changed its face, can it be rejuvenated
Faced with the declining performance year after year, McDonald's also tried many methods, but most of them failed because of unsatisfactory results. It is the biggest turning point in McDonald's marketing strategy change to reposition the target group from children to teenagers. It is undoubtedly correct for the target group to target teenagers, because teenagers have always supported more than half of McDonald's. In September, 2113, McDonald's implemented brand renewal globally. On September 25th, McDonald's brand LOGO, slogan, personality, TV advertisements, theme songs and staff uniforms were completely updated in China. Employees of more than 561 McDonald's branches in China took off their traditional clothes and put on black or red sports T-shirts and baseball caps. The original "Laugh often and try McDonald's" which lasted for nearly 51 years was completely updated to "I like it", and fashionable and modern values replaced McDonald's brand concept of "warmth" in the past. In order to cater to the psychological characteristics of the target population, such as worshipping stars, pursuing fashion trends and slightly rebellious personality, McDonald's played sports cards, not only sponsored the Olympic Games, but also invited Yao Ming and Wang Leehom as its spokespersons. This change is very correct in terms of overall strategy, but it is not satisfactory in actual implementation.
first of all, is it reasonable for McDonald's standard colors to change from golden yellow and red to golden yellow and black? Teenagers have the psychological characteristics of being unconventional and rebellious, and turning red into black is to express and cater to this psychological characteristic. Black can show otherness and magic, but black is not a positive color, and it often represents destruction and evil. In literary and artistic works, it is not difficult to find that many demons and conspirators are often marked by black. Rebellious and even destructive tendencies are part of the psychological characteristics of teenagers in the process of growing up. Taking black as the standard color will strengthen teenagers' rebellious psychology. From the banning of TV series Meteor Garden, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion that it is unacceptable for society to cater to some shortcomings in teenagers' personality. For an international enterprise based on long-term development, McDonald's should obviously take into account the relationship between business and social morality.
Secondly, as a service organization providing fast food, McDonald's brand attributes are different from general fast-moving consumer goods and sporting goods. Whether it is the best choice to tie sports together and whether it is the most appropriate choice to hire sports stars remains to be discussed. In the online survey of McDonald's website about the people who have the most influence on customers, the author got arguments to support his point of view: 43,561 people participated in the voting, and thought that the people who had the most influence on themselves were: parents: 43.514%, 18,955 votes; Movie stars/singers: 6.421%, 2797 votes; Athletes: 6.153%, 2637 votes; Teachers: 26.113%, 11327 votes; Politicians: 6.146% 2634 votes, others 11.961% 5211 votes. It can be seen that most McDonald's customers are most easily influenced by parents and teachers, not stars or athletes. These celebrities may be very attractive, but their influence is very low. The dress of McDonald's shop assistants lined with black T-shirts and white basketball sportswear is a simple accumulation of various brand elements. After all, the restaurant is not a disco or a roadside pub. If you have a disco in McDonald's restaurant, or turn two somersaults after eating two hamburgers, it is unimaginable.