McDonald's Case Study

PART 1 Summary

Nowadays, the obesity rates of children is increasing rapidly all over the world, in America, approximately 30% of kids are overweight or obese. In Britain, one in five children are suffering from obesity while in Spain is 30% and Italy is a bit higher with the percentage of 36. Not only the Europeans and Americans have encountered this issue, obesity rate in Asia is also escalating. People are worrying about children in their countries will be as fat as Americans and blaming this situation to the fast-food portion size and advertisings aimed at children. Governments and health advocates are taking efforts to prevent the condition worsening.

Europe wants to ban TV advertising of kid’s food as well as ad icons like Ronald McDonald and calls for the food industry to set its own regulations to curb “junk food” ads targeting at the citizens. In America, they even compare Ronald McDonald to Joe Camel in the tobacco industry.

Under such an extremely adverse public opinion environment, McDonald’s was forced to take steps to maintain its brand image. When the documentary Super Size me brought the concern of customers about eating at McDonald’s would be unhealthy in the U.K., the company promoted a campaign called “Changes”, which including menu changes such as serving healthier food and smaller portion sizes. This altering was considered as a smart move, however, it is worth noted that during the whole campaign, the related advertising posters were released without the Golden Arches. McDonald’s claimed that they wanted the public focus on their new products and change the image of them. Nevertheless, what McDonald’s has done wasn’t as effective as they projected. Research showed the restaurant didn’t gain much awareness of new menu items from people, not to mention image changing. But even worse, a study showed an unexpected fact that frequent customers of McDonald’s don’t want to admit that they have meals there. Some researchers opined that the company should stick on the campaign for a long-term.

To address the situation of the undesirable impacts caused by the film Super Size Me particularly, McDonald’s post full-page newspaper ads argued that “We don’t agree with is the idea that eating at McDonald’s is bad for you.” This approach was to create a “balanced debate”, according to a spokeswoman for the company. In addition to these, McDonald’s U.K. launched a campaign targeting at kids with a new animated fruit and vegetable character “Yums” to appeal to children having an active lifestyle base on the government’s call.

In other European countries, such as France, in which people are fully health-conscious, McDonald’s chose to quote the statement of nutritionist in order to convince people that products at McDonald’s can fit into a balanced diet. Moreover, marketers in France also emphasized the importance of physical exercise. In other countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden, McDonald’s developed local healthy food in their menu while in Australia, they cut 50% budget of ads aimed at kids.

After the company’s efforts towards the obesity issues, a big turnaround happened in European market of McDonald’s. Ironically, even with the governments’ promotion of healthy diet, people still tend to buy the traditional products like burgers and fries. The interesting thing is, prince Charles also chimed in the issues. He suggested to ban McDonald’s, however people thought him as a hypocrite and oppositely, McDonald’s gained positive comments from this. By using prince Harry who is a big fan of their burgers, McDonald’s obtained a good victory.

PART 2 Q&A

1.When ads promoting healthy lifestyles featuring Ronald McDonald’s are equated with Joe Camel and cigarette ads, I believe that McDonald’s should fight for itself and emphasis that unlike cigarette which is always being harmful, eating at McDonald’s every once in a while won’t do much harm to your body, especially now they have new menu that contains more healthy food. Besides, McDonald’s should get itself involved in more charities events and promote healthy lifestyles in public to maintain their brand image.

I don’t think McDonald’s should eliminate Ronald McDonald’s in its ads. Firstly, Ronald McDonald is a successful brand mascot which symbolizes its brand concepts. More importantly, people emotionally connected to Ronald McDonald, kids love taking photos with him, they love to see him in the ads. Eliminate him will impair McDonald’s brand strength.

2.The merits of the law proposed by France: It gave the companies more choices which means more its more flexible.