Hello
I recently had the misfortune to watch the latest McDonald’s advert on UK television. If you have seen it, you will know that it centres around a boy asking his Mum about his late father. The gist of it is that the boy doesn’t appear to have much in common with his father e.g. being good at sports.
The big reveal is that the boy’s favourite McDonald’s meal is ‘Filet-o-Fish’. The same favourite meal as his father. (Have you ever actually tried typing out that name? ‘Filet-o-Fish’. It seems even more wrong and cheesy than when just simply saying it out loud (if that’s possible)).
Some people weren’t too offended, but a lot of people were very offended by what they saw as a cynical attempt by McDonald’s to use bereavement to create a warm and fuzzy feeling about their company.
McDonald’s has apparently stated that it didn’t intend to cause any offence and was simply trying to show us that McDonald’s was part of the family experience, with us in good times and bad.
I can’t say that I was particularly enamoured by the advert, it did look exploitative to me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the father had in fact died from an obesity related illness.
Anyway, the health food mega corporation has withdrawn the advert. Perhaps it was an innocent mistake. Perhaps they simply got caught doing what so many adverts do, linking emotion to product in ways that when you think about the link logically, is absolutely ridiculous. In the case of McDonald’s, because the situation was such a sensitive one, the intended warm and fuzzy ‘aren’t we a fab company’ emotion was for many, replaced by a ‘you bunch of cynical b*******’ emotion.
The idea of using emotion to drive behaviours and influence decision making is not new of course, and in terms of other TV adverts trying the same (but a lot less insensitive) trick, look no further than Coca-Cola (e.g. the jolly Santa) or John Lewis (e.g. Christmas adverts, in particular the ‘man on the moon’. The lengths that they went to, to make that advert scientifically accurate were astounding (hand held Hubble telescopes, non-exploding in a vacuum helium balloons, a breathable lunar atmosphere. It was almost like watching a mini-episode of Horizon on BBC2)).
Wouldn’t the working lives of so many people be so much better if some organisations spent at least the same amount of time and expense making sure that their employees were actually having a good time and being rewarded fairly, as they do on convincing us about how wonderful and caring/innovative/great/trendy/cool/awesome etc their organisation is?
Some companies are of course shining examples of doing both, others sadly, are not. A different type of leadership is required. This leadership change is already happening in some teams and organisations, but it needs to happen more quickly, more widely, and more often.
Best wishes
Mike
N.B. This month’s podcast is slightly different. It was my absolute pleasure to talk to Adrian Hussey, who is the People and Capability Director at McCurrach. I think that you will find what Adrian has to say extremely informative and thought provoking.
The link is below:
https://soundcloud.com/user-786911924/bl-podcast-may-2017-with-adrian