McDonald's and its cultural branding principle through effective communication process - Essay Example

McDonald’s and its cultural branding principle through effective communication process Introduction Branding and media are strongly interrelated in today’s highly modernized world. The capitalist society provides values to everything and it can be intrinsic, extrinsic or both. This substantially means that it is more important to realize significant value for certain things. When one will talk about a specific product, the idea is to associate the actual quality of such offering with its brand. An established brand therefore is not hard to sell knowing that many people have understood its specific value in the market. However, due to increasing competition wherever one may go, different brands try to differentiate themselves from the other. One significant example is how McDonald’s established its name in the international market through its brand. From its humble beginning as a small barbeque restaurant, McDonald’s today is one of the gigantic international companies operating with more than 32,000 restaurants operating across more than 100 countries in the world to at least 60 million people everyday (McDonald’s, 2011). McDonald’s is most familiar with its brands such as Big Mac, Chicken McNuggets, and Happy Meals. These are potential brands that made their way into becoming public taste icons in the fast food chain industry. The objective of this paper is to understand the association between media and the brands of McDonald’ across the globe. It is evident that media have created a significant impact on the brands of the said company. However, this is essentially incorporated into its marketing strategy through its effective communication process. Using various ads, the company is able to convey essential information to its target market. Therefore, the proponent discusses McDonald’s and the power of its cultural branding principle through effective communication in the creation of its brands. Literature Review McDonald’s as market leader Fast foods have become integral parts of everybody’s fast-paced life. With them, it is just easy to manage time. There is convenience and even saving of the most valuable resource one could potentially and relatively consider, time. As everybody is faced with very demanding daily schedules, fast foods have proven themselves effective at coping time and meeting deadlines and other related concerns. This specifically created a wonderful opportunity for McDonald’s to meet the prevailing needs in the market via comprehensive marketing techniques. Things did not simply come smoothly for McDonald’s the easy way around. It needed to substantially invest in creating its name through effective communication process. One important move it was able to successfully perform in order to achieve its place in the competition right now was its ability to differentiate its product service and product offerings. It substantially aimed at giving the world its favorite foods, but in a unique way, which provides a greater value for customer experience (McDonald’s 2011). McDonald’s simply has marketing freedom. With this business privilege, McDonald’s has become a powerful company in the world, a producer of knowledge, opener of public consciousness and a great deceiver because there is freedom on its part to use the media with a corresponding advertising budget (Kincheloe, 2002). This implies that media advertisements are considered to be great ways to influence people and keep the target consumers informed about the latest line of product and service offerings of McDonald’s. The company’s yearly worldwide advertising budget is US $2 billion (Jucker, 2002). It is indeed a huge advertising budget, making it the world’s finest market leader in its industry. However, why would such company invest in such amount if it has become so widely acceptable by its target consumers? Brands of McDonald’s and the media According to Arvidson (2006), brands have significant values that could be used to the fullest in order to achieve specific level of profit. Furthermore, this is agreed by Moor (2007) emphasizing that branding as a marketing strategy is aimed at enhancing profitability, productivity, and efficiency. Based on this idea, it is important to consider that from the point of view of McDonald’s, media are the ultimate tools that it could potentially use in order to make known of its products across the world so as to achieve substantial amount of profit. Let us illustrate it this way. Brands have significant values in a profit-driven economy. They have certain potential to uplift corporate economic status because they are integral parts of achieving profitability, productivity and efficiency. It is hard to convey information or initiate communication across the globe. However, this is made possible through the use of the media. The goal of McDonald’s is to penetrate the entire market around the globe. In order to do this, the most convenient way, though it might be expensive at some point is tapping the potential of the media. McDonald’s always ensures that it could substantially introduce its brands to the fullest. Its brands are established out of the use of effective communication process through the media. As stated earlier, McDonald’s unlike any other companies used to allocate high budget for its advertisements in various media. For example, McDonald’s substantially uses radio in order just to reach out specific markets that are mostly entertained by it. It uses billboards to entice specific markets like young children who could be influential to their parents’ decisions. As a result, McDonald’s used to acknowledge the potential of children as good product endorsers. This is the reason why most of its commercials in the media usually depict children characters. Creation of need It is stated earlier in the previous sections that McDonald’s is good at creating a need for its product or service offerings. In fact, this is the prevailing trend in modern marketing. Organisations are more willing to create a need for their offerings that could substantially meet the needs of their target markets, unconsciously or not (Boone & Kurtz, 2006; Kotler et al., 1999). Creating a need is another powerful strategy that McDonald’s uses in order to create a powerful name for its brands through a very effective communication process in the media. Its use of the media and ads are powerful justifications how McDonald’s substantially create a need for its product or service offerings. This could now sum up why communication theory is important in understanding how the power of McDonald’s brand is created. This would also justify why it is important in its part to impart knowledge to its customers. This could also potentially explain why there is a need for it to open up public consciousness and finally, creating indirect acts prior to reaching its target markets. As a result in doing these, McDonald’s has become people’s standard (Haig, 2011). It has become an iconic brand itself because of its corresponding identity value. It has built up brand identity, which is essential in the marketplace which is constantly subject to changes (Upshaw, 1995). Analysis McDonald’s brand and communication Communication is part of cultural branding principles (Holt, 2004). There is no other most valuable information that McDonald’s tries to convey into its target market, but its brands and their values. Among any other thing, it is its strategic approach to stand on top of the competition in its industry, so it is important on its part that it should highly differentiate itself from the rest through the power of its brands. Its brands are very familiar among kids. This is the reason why in many times kids simply are used by McDonald’s as ambassadors for its products. This is a substantial reason why McDonald’s was able to come up with important power for its brand. It is gained through time and this can be best explained using some important communication theory. Communication theory Freud theory of psychoanalytic perspective assumes that man is motivated by unconscious desires (Gabriel, 2008). Man’s unconscious desire once it is motivated will significantly reveal the real intention of the person which boils down to the very act of seeking gratification. It is therefore important to take note that most of the communication initiated by McDonald’s seek to gratify its target market. In this case, the company is trying to influence its customers by opening their unconscious needs. It is a form of powerful motivation suggesting the unconscious minds with possible options of specific acts for gratification. This is a way of opening the mind of its target market particularly on influencing its target customers. McDonald’s is confined with the classic idea of believing that the media can significantly influence the people. This is a specific approach of magic bullet theory of mass communication assuming that the media strongly influenced the people who simply are in the state of being passive (Sparks, 2009). Due to this strong desire of McDonald to influence people with its brands, its specific approach requires it to use the media in order to integrate the best possible message that could create an impact on its target audience and the bottom line is to influence their buying behavior. This theory substantially connects with Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective about the power of unconscious mind. Therefore, the magic bullet theory can only be best applied when a person is deeply on a state of being unconscious at the deepest level. In this case, the media is viewed to be a powerful agent of change. In this approach, media is considered to have significant impact on the person or receiver of the message. However, this theory substantially overlooks in great detail the level of desire of McDonald’s to influence it target audience. Its very desire is part of Freud’s understanding about some needs of humans to be gratified. In order to gratify the need of McDonald’s it substantially uses the media for it is considered to increase its productivity, profitability and efficiency at some extent. This is its very desire and its gratification is only achieved by tapping the potential of media using a very effective communication process through powerful ads. This is the very essence of the uses gratification theory stating that the humans have the most powerful control over the media (Watson, 1998). This could explain in great detail how McDonald’s was able to achieve the power of its brand through the media. Producing knowledge McDonald’s is good at producing knowledge as an integral part of its cultural branding principle through effective communication in the media. Unconsciously, people have to be opened up to many possibilities in this regard. McDonald’s has to see to it that it substantially gained the willingness of its customers to learn. It would be impossible on its part to impart knowledge to its target customers without their willingness to learn with new essential knowledge. In this regard, there has to be the right motivation for the target market for them to acquire knowledge. In fact, McDonald’s is good at enhancing its customers’ about the knowledge of its products. For example, it usually integrates in its commercial ads the power of existing culture that every customer could relate. Its various ads with its brands are strong enough to be retained in one’s mind because it is applying the very foundation of cultural branding principle which is the appropriate communication. Knowledge could never be produced or replicated by the source to its target audience without the need to communicate in the best possible way. As stated earlier, McDonald’s is good at motivating the desires of its customers to increase their knowledge about the knowledge of its brands. Through its ads, McDonald’s gained acceptance from its target customers because they are bombarded with knowledge allowing them to understand the essence or significance of the products introduced to them. This is such a powerful technique that always produces power for McDonald’s to stand in the midst of competition and even in very tough economic times. As a result, McDonald’s would not find it hard to convince its target markets because they are already enhanced with the knowledge about its product and service offerings. It is easy to sell products to certain customers if they know a lot about it. In this principle, McDonald’s was just simply trying to increase the motivation of its customers to gratify their unconscious needs by increasing their knowledge of its product and service offerings. Opening public consciousness As mentioned earlier, McDonald’s is known to open up public consciousness as an integral part of creating a strong powerful brand in the world. McDonald’s simply would want to associate power into its brand because in doing this, it would not be hard enough for it to open up the details about its product and service offerings. This is the reason why it would matter a lot for McDonald’s to focus or concentrate on spending for commercial ads. Its way to influence its target audience through the use of effective communication in the media is a substantial form of opening public consciousness. McDonald’s aims to transform individual mind by simply creating a need or demand for its product or service offerings, as it is good or effective at creating a need for its product and service offerings. Deceiving through communication of brands McDonald’s usually tries to emphasise different brands that could possibly attract kids. What the kids would want is actually supported by their parents. In this regard, McDonald’s is powerful enough to create a deceiving force that entices children or its target market to try its product or service offerings. McDonald’s therefore is good at creating indirect moves but with substantial outcomes in the end. Its deception made through its brands is not actually the kind that could harm people or its target customers. However, this is just a powerful force that would create a need or demand for its product or service offerings. Conclusion Cultural branding principle is always there to create power for each brand trying to be a cut above the other in a highly capitalist world. This is due to the fact that brand itself speaks for certain values that in the long run is capable of achieving other important values such as profitability, productivity and efficiency. McDonald’s is not far from how other companies create their edge and full potential in their respective industry. In fact, McDonald’s has the initiative to play its competitive advantage integrating a certain communication process and the power of the media in developing the potential of a certain brand, just as it is the usual trend in the modern economy. Thus, for McDonald’s its brands are always its potential assets. In this paper, the proponent clearly emphasises the great opportunity for McDonald’s to create a power for its brands through communication as an important component of cultural branding principle and the use of media in obtaining this objective. In its use of the media, McDonald’s has the ability to apply competitive strategies in communicating its brands. These strategies are all in line with opening up public consciousness for its brands and creating needs for them. As a result, through its effective communication process with the media, McDonald’s became an iconic brand in its industry allowing strong market acceptance for its both product and service offerings. McDonald’s simply has been trying to work out everything for the achievement of the power of its brand. The very basic principle in this objective is its usage of effective communication together with its underlying principles and theories as a powerful component of its cultural branding principles. Communicating through its ads is proven effective in the case of McDonald’s as it continuously invests substantial amount in it yearly. McDonald’s continuously feeds the market with the right knowledge, opening up their consciousness and allowing them to be informed through the media. These remarkably have added corresponding value on its brand and remarkable competitive advantage. References Arvidson, A. (2006) Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. New York: NY: Routledge. Boone, L. E., and Kurtz, D. L. (2006) Contemporary Marketing. 12th ed. Mason, Ohio: Thomson: South-Western. Gabriel, Y. (2008) Organizing words: a critical thesaurus for social and organization studies. 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(1995) Building brand identity: a strategy for success in a hostile marketplace. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Watson, J. (1998) Media communication: an introduction to theory and process. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Read More