CHICAGO - McDonald's Corp. Thursday will launch a new national advertising campaign aimed squarely at the American gut.
The campaign illustrates "how customers think about McDonald's when their stomachs start growling," said Brad Ball, senior vice president of marketing, McDonald's USA.
"We hope this campaign drives the brand in exactly the same way that consumers respond to it," said Ball, adding that the idea for the campaign came directly from consumer insights.
The new television ads use situational comedy to illustrate consumers' gut reaction when they hear the word McDonald's. For example, in one ad, an office worker mentions he's going to McDonald's and is inundated with co-workers' lunch orders. A second spot promoting the Egg McMuffin breakfast sandwich features a bus load of commuters who persuade the driver to take them to McDonald's for breakfast. All the spots end with the tag, "Did somebody say, McDonald's?"
"The goal is to use this as a call to action to wrap underneath our value messages when we're in that mode," said Ball.
The brand-building campaign is the first effort from DDB Needham Chicago, which was charged with buffing up McDonald's image. In July, Needham, part of Omnicom Group, won back the $450 million domestic advertising account it had lost to cross-town rival Leo Burnett Co. in 1981. Needham had the lead position on McDonald's account from 1970 to 1981.
The campaign also includes new ads from Burrell Communications, Chicago, McDonald's shop for African-American advertising, as well as an Hispanic ad from Del Rivero Messianu Advertising, Miami.
McDonald's needs a home run with its new ad campaign. The chain has suffered a series of marketing mishaps, including the failed Campaign 55 promotion last spring that featured a 55-cent sandwich with the purchase of french fries and any size drink. Originally scheduled to last the year, McDonald's pulled most of the promotion after only six weeks because it failed to generated targeted lunch and dinner traffic.
Last year, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based chain struck out with its $200 million marketing program designed to promote the Arch Deluxe line of sandwiches. The sandwiches also failed to generate traffic.
The burger giant recently has been under pressure from Miami-based rival Burger King Corp., a unit of Grand Metropolitan Plc, which has been running an aggressive ad campaign, including price promotions as well as the introduction of the Big King, a beefier clone of McDonald's Big Mac.
Although McDonald's has been experimenting with various regional burger and chicken products, the company has no plans to launch a new national burger, Ball said. However, he denied earlier press accounts suggesting McDonald's would avoid price promotions entirely: "We will continue to be driven by value."
Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant consulting company, said McDonald's biggest task is to convince consumers that it's back in the game.
"They've got to clear up the image that they've created as a company that is suddenly misfiring and not executing the way they were. There has been so much general press and TV coverage in which they've not been portrayed in the most favorable light."
Roger Lipton, principal at Lipton Financial Services, New York, said McDonald's needs to communicate its product story. "They have not gotten the consistent message across about the basic quality of their product," said Lipton, who added that the company hasn't had a memorable advertising theme since 1970 when DDB Needham created "You deserve a break today."
"The biggest corporate shortfall has been McDonald's marketing," Lipton said.
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