You can pick up the original article here, if you want to,
but the details are simple enough. About 12 years ago, one of the other
quick-serve hamburger chains called Jack-in-the-Box pulled exactly the same
stunt, finding a guy whose legal name was Ronald MacDonald and getting him to
eat and express appreciation for their new burger product on camera. The
Jack-in-the-Box people apparently selected a guy who uses the alternate spelling
of MacDonald on purpose, just in case their larger competitor decided to give
them grief about the campaign, but their ad agency admits that they also chose
that particular Ronald because he performed well on the video. Other than that,
though, the commercial uses almost exactly the same gimmick in almost exactly
the same way…
Whether or not this will have any effect on the ad campaign –
or on sales of the new products it is trying to promote – remains to be seen,
of course. As of this writing the Jack-in-the-Box chain is only operating in 19
of the states, and with only 2,200 locations it’s still relatively small when
compared to Taco Bell’s 6,500 locations, let alone McDonald’s. People in many
parts of the country may never have seen a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant (the
Company’s website lists the nearest one to East Lansing as being 210 miles away
in Indiana), or even seen one of its ads. And even if they have, people don’t
necessarily devote that much time to memorizing ads run by (relatively) small
fast-food chains a decade or more ago. There’s also the issue that Taco Bell
itself has a history of running with unconventional advertising…
Probably the best-remembered Taco Bell campaign is the
Talking Chihuahua series of the late 1990s, although the late 1980s “Make a Run
for the Border” campaign is still widely satirized. My personal favorite will
always be the company’s stunt in 2001 when the Mir space station was falling
out of orbit, and the company put up a 40’ by 40’ target in the South Pacific
and broadcast that if any part of the falling station hit the target they would
give a free taco to every person in America. With a history like that it’s hard
to imagine that anyone would get that worked up about this new Ronald McDonald
campaign, even if it is ripping off an earlier commercial made by a rival
company. A much bigger issue is how McDonald’s will respond to the Company’s
new breakfast products…
As I noted in my last post, the off-peak sales have been a
key factor in making the McDonald’s locations more profitable than any of their
competitors, and while it will take time for any new product to gain traction,
let alone non-traditional offerings like a taco made out of a waffle, it seems
highly likely that they will have to do something in reply to this new
challenge. There is no question that McDonald’s represents an entrenched
competitor with an established customer base and a large network of locations
already optimized to sell breakfast products during the relevant business
hours; the question is whether that will be enough to carry the day. Or, more
to the point, perhaps, how will they respond to the challenge? Because if the history
of the Burger Wars has taught us anything, it’s that McDonald’s is unlikely to
just sit still for this…
No comments:
Post a Comment