McDonald's - From Obese Fast Food Grease Joint to Healthy Sophisticated Food Bar

All brands and products have a product lifecycle including stages of introductory, growth, maturity and decline. When a product reaches decline, it is either taken off the shelves or extended using various marketing processes. Usually it will eventually die out. Brands on the other hand are usually long lasting and produce many products throughout its long life cycle. Many of these products decline and are discontinued but there is always a new product and a new angle of advertising to keep the brand alive. The most successful long lasting brands are constantly repositioning themselves to reach the widest audience possible or to introduce an entirely new target audience altogether. The image of a brand is part of the reason why we buy it. For example, ST Johnson. Mothers and families choose their products because they claim to be a family orientated business. Kellogg's and their cereals are usually bought for children because they use the Coco Pop monkey or the Forsties Tiger and these images are associated with children. In this essay I will be focussing on McDonald's recent repositioning from tacky unhealthy fast food joint to healthy high quality food establishment.

McDonald's are the market leaders in the family restaurant/fast food market and can easily be identified by its golden arched M logo. In the past few years there has been media uproar against McDonald's. Court cases, suing and bad press have forced McDonald's to reposition itself from an obese pandemic creator to a fine food establishment. It did this by putting a healthy slant on its food. According to its website's menu you now have the option of eating carrot sticks, fruit bags, salad and sandwiches as well as drinking water, milk and fresh juice. The website itself has drastically changed with the front page showing healthier chicken wraps and links to nutrition and exercise.

Advertising Campaign

In the old days McDonalds were more than happy to plug their new Big Mac, in fact their first ever TV advert featured a group of children going to a magical place called McDonald land where the grass was made of Fries and there were Milk Shake Volcanoes. Its target audience being kids.

Fast-forward to today and you see three middle-aged women coming in to try the new caser-salads at a trendy looking McDonald's restaurant. This product lifestyle/image advertisement brings in a much older female audience by using female role models represented as successful, good looking and sophisticated. The ideology being that to gain this lifestyle you must also buy a McDonald's salad. There is also no sign of any cheeseburgers or the average unhealthy food associated with McDonald's. Thus attempting to reposition the brand as healthy and aim it at an older, possibly female audience.

McDonald's have also teamed up with various sports centers to give football coaching and other activities to children in areas that don't normally get the opportunities for organized sport. You could say they are using covert advertising by having their logos on sports equipment and clothing used by the youngsters. This also helps them to get their name associated with something healthy and positive. I believe they have taken this approach to give the ideology that they actually care about the well-being of children that eat their food and that they're not just about a Big-Mac and fries.

Restaurants and Design

Something else McDonald's are doing to aid their repositioning is gradually redesigning their restaurants and graphics. We all fondly or not so fondly recognize the McDonald's franchise by its huge yellow M billboards, vibrant red colors and tacky plastic interior. Today on the outside we are beginning to see the simple yellow logo placed on gray backing. The inside has gone dark orange and terra cotta with wooden and brick like interior and seating, giving the place warmth and simplicity that wouldn't look wrong in a sushi bar or coffee shop. McDonald's have named this the forever young, re-branding scheme.

They have also separated the McDonald's logo from the writing, splitting the text from the old image representing a new sophisticated customer base whilst holding on to its old customers and brand recognition. This appeals to the older more sophisticated generation. It is also interesting to note the modernist logo (text without traditional flourishes). Wikipedia.com describes how they will now be implementing new zones, throughout McDonald's restaurants. The Linger zone will offer comfortable armchairs and wireless Internet connections, appealing to the businessmen who may want to go to lunch and finish some work or send an email. There will also be plasma TV's offering news and sports, branching out to an even wider audience.

The language used on McDonald's adverts and menus is also quite different from its older days. It's short and simplistic, rarely finding any complete sentences. You will normally find the product and then an adjective, for example, salad changes to salad plus. Toasted sandwich changes to toasted deli sandwich. This implies that McDonald's is one tier above the competition. You can compare it to the M&S adverts. "This is not just beef."

The above example is one way a brand may reposition itself, but brands are doing this all the time. One of the most famous to do this was Benetton who used shock tactics to promote his United Colors of Benetton clothing range. A more recent cult brand repositioning was from the UK's Nestle and their Yorkie bar. "Its not for girls."

Brands will continue to change and so will their products. It's just a reflection of our change in society. The public became more health conscious, so McDonald's repositioned.