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October 11, 2004

Sharing Is For Losers

McDonald's teaches us how to not share

In the wake of increasing criticisms of the, ahem, chicken content
of its signature Chicken McNugget product (which is
euphemistically spun as "target[ing] a population that is consuming
more white-meat chicken"), McDonald's last spring introduced
Chicken Selects -- an all-white-and-breast-meat chicken tender
designed to serve as the premium alternative to McNuggets.
They're bigger than McNuggets, made from better ingredients,
and have cooler dipping sauces ("Tangy Low-fat Honey Mustard,
Spicy Buffalo or Creamy Ranch"). Sounds yummy.

Supporting the Chicken Selects product launch are a series of TV
spots that depict hip-looking twentysomethings (the target market
for these spots) munching Chicken Selects in an array of lonely
corporate settings (otherwise empty cubicles and offices) while
rehearsing the speech they will undoubtedly have to give when an
acquaintance or co-worker dares ask them to share one of said
Chicken Selects. The gag is that the twentysomethings are
muttering elaborate articulations of a pretty simple sentiment: No,
I will not share my food with you. So good are these Chicken
Selects that you will need to practice techniques for refusing the
entreaties of your hungry but dimwitted friends who haven't
figured out where or how to buy these delicious treats! I'm lovin'
it!

Let's balance the caveat that we shouldn't read too too much into
stupid TV commercials with the acknowledgment that Big
Companies like McDonald's do not make national TV ads casually
(and that said ads will always reflect some sort of brand insight
gleaned from many hundreds of thousands of dollars of consumer
research), and try to sort out what this spot might tell us about
McDonald's relationship with its customers:

Sharing is for chumps: the literal message of the ads is that
those who consume this product will be so enchanted by its
features and benefits that they will need to defend their quarry
from potential scavengers. The cheekiness of the ad (as we
twenty- and thirtysomethings do like our ads cheeky) is that it
dares to suggest that this product is worth NOT sharing. That is,
forget what they told you in kindergarten -- this product is so
good that you're not going to want to share! And McDonald's will
support you in your selfishness! Even if it makes you a non-sharing
asshole! This is a pretty fun sentiment, and is so at odds with
typical middle-America McDonald's values (family, community,
sharing) that it actually works. And if they're trying to speak to a
younger, hipper crowd, they needed to do something a little
questionable. They did the calculus and decided that the value of
their hipper message outweighed the whole "people who don't
share their Chicken Selects are kind of assholes" thing.

Eating alone is totally fine: the children of the 70s and 80s
were weaned on Saturday-morning McDonald's advertising that
sold us the concept of happy families visiting McDonald's together,
breaking cheeseburgers in a moment of domestic bliss! McDonald's
= time with family = family must love you = happy! Most of the
standard cultural associations of eating typically have something to
do with eating with groups of people -- we like to join with others
when we take food. Not Chicken Selects, though. These ads
show us solitary folks eating alone, sometimes even with
headphones on. Stay away, they say, for I am eating my delicious
Chicken Selects and am not to be disturbed! And again, it works --
it plays on existing values and stresses that this product is worth
flouting thousands of years of cultural tradition. I'm almost
shocked that the guys in the ads aren't defecating in their hands
and screaming obscenities.

McDonald's is for losers: usually when you want to speak to hip
young people, you show sexy folks consuming your products. Not
so, here. Weird, weird people eating alone is what you get.
People that mutter conversations under their breath. People with
whom you probably wouldn't want to share chicken fingers in the
first place (note that you don't see other people dying to hang
out with them). Again, it's counterintuitive to what McDonald's
usually wants to sell you -- nice-looking people consuming products
with glee -- and it might actually work.

So that leaves us with selfish dorks eating alone while listening to
headphones and rehearsing their explanations for why they don't
want to share. Oh my, these Chicken Selects must really be the
business! Definitely a different look for McDonald's, not so much in
the aspirational category of advertising favored by pretty much
everyone in consumer products ("Buy this product and fulfill your
dreams!"), but at least you notice them. Mostly, I thought these
ads were kind of crap, until I heard another theory....

Be sure to wink at the elephant as you pass him: I was giving
this pitch to some friends when one pointed out that he always
eats his McDonald's alone. McDonald's, he explained, is NOT a
popular option for the work-lunch crowd. In a world of paninis,
burgers without the bun, and made-to-order salads, all consumed
by people well-disciplined in the language of gym attendance and
carb-counting, eating McDonald's is a filthy, dirty, evil, and
accordingly, solitary pleasure. When he eats McDonald's, he does
it by himself, and it makes him happy. Summing what we learned
from the ad with the assumption that McDonald's doesn't make
ads by accident, could this ad be the evidence that McDonald's
knows that people actually DO eat their product alone: that it is a
guilty pleasure, one you're better off hiding from the judgmental
eyes of your coworkers. Perhaps! And maybe the joke isn't that
you're going to need to shoo people away from your food, but
that the product is so good that you imagine that this one day
(the day you get the Chicken Selects instead of the Quarter
Pounder) will be the day that your colleagues won't shun you and
your McDonald's! It's a logical stretch, for sure, but it isn't out of
the question, and suddenly the ad is aspirational: Chicken Selects
will make loser dorks popular owners of a hot product! Order
Quarter Pounders at your own peril; if you want to put an end to
lonely lunches, you're gonna need to get you some of them there
Chicken Selects!

(Of course, the whole thing falls apart when we consider that
McDonald's already sells a product that you DO have to aggressively
defend from your scavenging friends. They're called french fries,
and they probably contain heroin*. So you know.)

*Not actually true. Probably.

Posted by thatkid at October 11, 2004 5:46 PM under Biznass

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