Letters to the Editor
[Re: Loose Cannon, “The Archest Column Yet,” Direct Newsline, April 7, 2003]:
Richard, during my tenure at Burnett, we worked on a couple of projects for McDonald’s related to your recent column.
First was a loyalty program, McMoms, that targeted mothers of young children — the adult audience likeliest to choose fast food on a regular basis. The program was designed to deliver moms their own benefits from taking the kids there, and was more about being a mom than about being a McDonald’s patron. They received monthly newsletters with parenting tips, coupons for their own use when they brought in their kids … members even wrote in with their own ideas.
The program was discontinued shortly after I started, for the main reason that McDonald’s couldn’t quantify precisely enough the ROI value. As Bob Weinberg points out, tracking mechanisms for loyalty programs require a certain degree of infrastructure. For a retailer that deals mostly in cash transactions, that infrastructure needs to be invented. Too much investment in technology, equipment, training…for low dollar-value transactions.
Another project along the lines of your discussion was an advertising campaign that focused on nostalgia. I participated in an agency focus group that probed our associations to McDonald’s based on our childhood experiences there. We began reminiscing as you did; then started to recall that as kids we had rather, ah, limited tastes. As adults we place a higher value on good-tasting (not to mention nutritionally balanced) food. Of course, Burnett staffers aren’t necessarily representative of the general population. But I think that a nostalgic view of McDonald’s requires our taste buds reverting to preteen levels.
Again, I’ll agree with Bob: McDonald’s needs to ask themselves, what problem are they solving? It isn’t the same problem that existed 20 or 30 years ago.
Michelle R. Blechman
VP/Strategic Planner
GREYDIRECT
Downers Grove, IL
