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Strategic Communication & Branding in McDonald's

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 Strategic Communication & Branding in McDonald's

Javad Yazdanpanah

Introduction
Climate change in recent decades has affected many aspects of human life. Meanwhile,
businesses have not been excepted from these effects. Even some businesses are to blame for
this situation. The fast-food industry is one of the sectors that has been widely criticized for its
role in environmental pollution(McGrath, 2019). Much of this criticism is directed at
McDonald; as one of the world's largest restaurant chains. These criticisms are since
McDonald's mostly plastic packaging has many adverse effects on the environment, although
McDonald's has tried to reduce plastic use in recent years. Also, large volumes of paper
packaging led to deforestation. Besides, the meat-producing process's carbon emission has
many negative effects on the environment(Schramade, 2019). McDonald's seeks to manage
these criticisms by maintaining communication strategies and maintaining its brand image.
This article seeks to provide a communication strategy for McDonald's to address criticism of
environmental change.

McDonald's grand strategy

McDonald's grand strategy is focused on strengthening and perpetuating the features that
have driven the business's growth in recent years. "Grand strategy is the policy-level decisions
an organization makes about goals, alignments, ethics and relationships with publics and other
forces in its environment" (Botan, 2017). Accordingly, McDonald " always strive for new heights
and excellence", as well as its "performance" and how it represents the Brand"(McDonald's,
2020). Accordingly, McDonald's grand strategy is called "Accelerating Arches ". Based on this
strategy, the company's goal is to " Feed and foster communities". Regard to this strategy and
goal, McDonald's mission is " Making delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone," and
brand values focus on "Serve", "Inclusion", "Integrity", "Community", and "family"
(McDonald's, 2020). Through these values, McDonald's advertised that is aimed to feed and
foster communities and open its doors to everyone while doing the right things and is a good
neighbour, to be better together.

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Regarding products, McDonald's is one of the largest restaurant chains in 119 countries with a
wide range of food and beverage products. These products are adapted based on the food and
cultural food preferences of different regions. In general, McDonald's product lines include
burgers and sandwiches, chicken and fish, salads, snacks and side dishes, drinks, desserts and
chic, as well as breakfast.

Brand mantra is a short explanation about the feeling of the brand and also "essence or spirit
of the brand positioning" (Lane Keller, 1999). In the last decades, McDonald's knows as "food,
folks and fun" brand(Park, Milberg and Lawson, 1991).

On the other hand, the value connection triangle shows the McDonald's values and its
connection with brand, customer and time/space (Mossinkoff, 2013):

Figure 1: McDonald's value connection triangle source: (Mossinkoff, 2013)

campaign-level objectives and KPI's

As McDonald's is encountered with critics related to climate change issues, the company is
going to formulate a strategy to change its brand image to an environmentally friendly
business. The strategy is a subordination of grand strategy: "the campaign-level planning and
decision-making involving manoeuvring and arranging resources and arguments to meet the

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needs of publics and organizational grand strategies" (Botan, 2017). According to the
company's values, feed and foster communities are essential for McDonald's. The community
includes the next generation, so McDonald's can define its strategy base on corporate social
responsibility and sustainability. Regarding sustainability concerns, McDonald's has made
several changes in its production process, packaging and waste management, Sustainable
Agriculture, conserving forests and Water Stewardship (McDonald's, 2020b). However, public
opinion still does not know much about these activities and recognizes McDonald as a business
that harms the environment. Through this strategic communication and branding campaign,
the company tries to reconstruct its image brand, raise awareness about its environmental
protection activities, and introduce itself as an environment-friendly business. In this way, it
can increase the sales of its new products, which are based on vegetable hamburger.
Therefore, the specific goals of the campaign can be summarized as follows:

• Increase sales of new products based on a vegetable hamburger

• Increase brand awareness about environmental protection activities
• Reconstruction of the brand image to an environmentally friendly business

To determine the relationship with different groups of people, defining these groups of publics
is necessary. Botan (2017) categorized different types of publics as below:

• Customers: while customer is someone who buys a product or service, consumer is an

end-user of the product or service(Jensen, 1996). McDonald's customers are everyone
who buys one of its food products.
• Audience: There are different definitions for audience, but in a general perspective, the
audience refers to those who watch or listen to programs on TV or radio.
• Publics: Publics are a "group of people who see themselves as having a common
interest with respect to an organization".
• Stakeholders: In general Stakeholders "any group or individual who can affect or is
affected by the achievement of an organization's objective" (Freeman,1984 cited in
Botan, 2017).

McDonald's publics can determine as the table below:

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Table 1: McDonald's publics

Publics categories segments

Customers and consumers • Families (parents with young children and couples)
• Students
• Busy singles
• People with a low income
• Vegan and vegetarian
Audience • people who watch or listen to McDonald's
advertisements or other programs through mass
media
Publics • Media
• environment activists
• The government/regulators
• food organizations
• Opinion leaders
Stakeholders • Customers and consumers
• Franchisees
• Suppliers
• Producers
• Employees

Regarding McDonald's communication and branding strategy and goals, different types of
key performance indicators (KPI) can be determined to measure to what extent the goals
are reached:

Table 2: Goals, KPIs and metrics

Goals KPIs Metrics

Increase sales of Sale growth of 𝐴𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ
∗ 100
𝐴𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ
new products vegetable
based on a hamburger
vegetable
hamburger Average ticket (𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑/𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠)

Customer churn rate 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ

∗ 100
𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡

Mobile app 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑢𝑦𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑎 𝐴𝑝𝑝

∗ 100
𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐴𝑝𝑝
Conversion rate
Direct web traffic Website traffic statistics

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 Increase brand Search Data Number of searches being completed about
awareness about McDonald's shown on Google analytics
environmental Social media reach • Number of views for each post on YouTube,
protection Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok
activities • Number of comments for each post on
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok
• Number of clicks on advertisements on
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok
• Impressions: number of times the Ad is shown
• CTR: (𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑠/𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 )
Television • Cost per completed view (CPCV)
advertisements • Frequency
reach • GRP: how many people saw TV ad
• TRP: how many people in the target
demographic saw TV ad
Radio • Reach
advertisements • Frequency
reach
Print media • Reach
advertisements • Frequency
reach • Number of used promotion coupon for print
media
Outdoor • Daily Effective Circulation (DEC): number of
advertisements vehicles and pedestrians that pass a billboard
reach per day
• Location
Reconstruction of Feeling about • Can be determined using survey and
the brand image McDonald's qualitative interviews
to an environmental • Content analysing of polished posts by
environmentally protection activities people on Social media about the company
friendly business • Content analysing of comments on Social
media about the company

communication (integrated) media

Integrated marketing communications means coordinating all elements of promotion,
including advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, direct marketing, and
online marketing and social media, as well as other elements of brand marketing (Product,
Place, Price); In such a way that all these components are in unison and focus on the same goal
(Shimp and Andrews, 2013). Integrity is essential in this type of marketing communication

because the different components come together and focus on one goal that leads to synergy

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and added value for the activities and communication channels' strength. Thus, the ability
Increases message arrival(Pickton and Broderick, 2005). Accordingly, and in line with McDonald's
strategy and goals for introducing itself as an environmentally friendly business, an integrated
marketing plan should be done through the following media and communication channels:

Figure 2: McDonald's integrated communication tools

According to McDonald's communication and branding campaign goals, the media and
integrated communication tools of this campaign are focused on paid media and organic
media. Among the paid media, this campaign focuses on advertising on social media, radio,
television and print media, and sending direct emails. With its high penetration rate, social
media can be an essential part of the integrated communication and branding campaign. These
media are also crucial as they provide feedback from the subscribers or followers and create
two-way communication. The campaign focuses on ads on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter,
Facebook and TicTak among the various social media. On the other hand, with the popularity
of social media, the power of mass media such as radio, television, and the print media seems
to have diminished, but they have retained their traditional audience. Besides, along with using

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social media, people are also using mass media, and there are still many popular programs on
these media.

In addition to paid media, organic media are also important. Through various activities such as
press conferences and news interviews, public relations can create content for the media to
raise awareness of McDonald's environmental activities through news coverage of events.

The fundamental question is how these media activities can change the audience's perception.
In all this media content, the ability to persuade is crucial. Designing persuasive messages is
depends on three critical factors: the person who sends the persuasive message, the message,
and the recipient of the message(O'Shaugnessy and O'Shaughnessy, 2003). This issue that "Who"
conveys the message affects the message persuasion ability and generally depends on two
factors: competence and Trustworthiness (Rogers, 1989). Competence refers to the ability of
the sender of the message. Accordingly, messages that are influenced by experts have a more
significant impact on the audience. The audience assumes that experts have information about
what they are saying, so they will listen. We can conclude that people accept what experts say
without going into too much detail about it. Also, messenger effectiveness is more significant
when the audience feels they are arguing against themselves. The reason for this is that his
trust in the audience is increased. Some researchers have discussed this process in terms of
document theory, pointing to two specific types of bias that may be interpreted by the
message's recipient. One is the knowledge bias, according to which we assume that the
messengers' information is inaccurate or biased. The second is the bias of a report based on
which the audience thinks that the messengers are not willing to report the facts they
know(Brehm, 2004). Accordingly, McDonald's can use experts in designing its advertising
messages to have more persuasive messages.

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References:
Botan, C. H. (2017) Strategic Communication Theory and Practice: The Cocreational Model.
John Wiley & Sons.

Brehm, S. S. (2004) Social Psychology. Boston; New York.

Jensen, H. R. (1996) 'The Interrelationship Between Customer and Consumer Value', ACR
Asia-Pacific Advances, AP-02, pp. 60–63.

Lane Keller, K. (1999) 'Brand Mantras: Rationale, Criteria and Examples', Journal of Marketing
Management, 15(1–3), pp. 43–51. doi: 10.1362/026725799784870513.

McDonald's (2020a) Accelerating the Arches. Available at:

https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-company/who-we-are/accelerating-the-
arches.html (Accessed: 21 January 2021).

McDonald's (2020b) Our Planet. Available at:

https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-purpose-and-impact/our-planet.html
(Accessed: 18 January 2021).

McGrath, M. (2019) 'Fast food giants under fire on climate and water usage', BBC News, 29
January. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47029485
(Accessed: 21 January 2021).

Mossinkoff, M. (2013) ‘De “lijmwaarde” van merken Jaargangen, Holland Management

Review, (150). Available at: https://www.hmr.nl/archief/de-lijmwaarde-van-merken
(Accessed: 21 January 2021).

O'Shaugnessy, J. and O'Shaughnessy, N. (2003) Persuasion in Advertising. Routledge.

Park, C. W., Milberg, S. and Lawson, R. (1991) 'Evaluation of Brand Extensions: The Role of
Product Feature Similarity and Brand Concept Consistency', Journal of Consumer Research,
18(2), pp. 185–193. doi: 10.1086/209251.

Pickton, D. and Broderick, A. (2005) Integrated marketing communications. 2nd ed. Harlow:
Prentice Hall/Financial Times.

Rogers, E. S. (1989) 'International Economic Sanctions: Improving the Haphazard U.S. Legal
Regime. By Barry E. Carter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. $34.50.', American
Political Science Review, 83(4), pp. 1439–1440. doi: 10.2307/1961732.

Schramade, W. (2019) 'McDonald’s: a sustainable finance case study’, Erasmus Platform for
Sustainable Value Creation, p. 28.

Shimp, T. A. and Andrews, J. C. (2013) Advertising Promotion and Other Aspects of Integrated
Marketing Communications. 9th edition. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning.

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