TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION
2.0 MESSAGE TACTICS
2.1 LIKING
2.2 SOCIAL PROOF
3.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
4.0 REFERENCES
1.0 INTRODUCTION
McDonald’s is one of the global food chains that constantly runs ‘famous order promotions’ by reintroducing its core menu items including Quarter Pound Burgers, Nuggets, Fries and other products.
In this report, we will critically evaluate the marketing communication tactics employed by a global food chain brand McDonald’s who collaborated with South Korean Music band “BTS” in 2021.
It created a record-breaking engagement & profits on a newly launched menu named ‘BTS Meal’ which includes a 10-piece Chicken nuggets, medium coke, medium fries, two dipping sauces motivated by popular recipes from McDonald’s South Korea.
This BTS Meal was made available in 49 countries across 5 continents such as Africa, Australia, Asia, North America, South America and Europe specifically targeted for millennials including the BTS fans and K-pop enthusiasts.
2.0 MESSAGE TACTICS
Source: McDonald’s Facebook Page
For the above marketing advertisement, McDonald’s utilized ‘Marketing 4.0’ strategy (Jimenez-Zarco, Ana & Rospigliosi, Asher & Martinez-Ruiz, María Pilar & Yusta, Alicia, 2017) which combined both online and offline medium including website, social media, newspaper, television and billboards to build more engagement with the customers.
Marketing 4.0 is a new marketing approach that completely changes the interaction of consumers with the product or service (Yeh et al., 2016). In addition, McDonald’s implemented a viral BTS Meal campaign which had all the members of BTS promoting the meal via digital video medium.
The main purpose behind this marketing strategy is to recover their losses from the Covid-19 pandemic as their sales have been seriously impacted in the last year.
2.1 LIKING
Cialdini has identified six principles that affect the purchase and consumption decisions (Cialdini, R.B 1984). He also mentioned that understanding these core principles will empower to persuade others to buy a specific product or take a specific action. One of the message tactics used in the McDonald’s BTS Meal campaign is ‘Liking’.
The giant food chain knows that BTS holds ‘physical attractiveness’ which means individuals carrying quality characters such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence. Moreover, the K-pop band BTS have a huge die-hard supporters and they call themselves as Army in the online world.
It is important to notice that McDonald’s has also adopted the horizontal approach as part of Marketing 4.0. It means the consumers create their ‘own segmentation’ using the same characteristics and build a community in the digital world (Heo, J., Cho, CH, 2009). Likewise, BTS has created its global community with a group of tribes.
In line with the horizontal approach, it is essential for the brands to understand the potential tribes for its market i.e. a set of audiences who share the same bond with the tribe leader and an idea. McDonald’s ensured to frame the BTS as the ‘tribe leader’ and their followers as the ‘group’.
2.2 SOCIAL PROOF
Another effective message tactics used by the global food chain is the ‘Social Proof’. In a interview, the chief marketing officer Morgan Flatley of McDonald’s mentioned the main reason for partnering with BTS is because of their passionate and loyal fanbase.
The marketing team ensured to clearly include the pictures of Army’s band in all BTS Meal campaigns starting from social media posts, websites and newspapers.
Source: McDonald’s Facebook Page
As the digital promotions were moving, the Army’s fans started to utilize e-WOM by creating different colorful menu cards, banners of the BTS Meal and shared with their friends and family. E-WOM is a strong marketing activity that can be used for conveying valuable information about a particular brand or service (Amblee & Bui, 2011)
Source: www.ieomsociety.org
In the above figure, you will see the comparison between the daily average followers and the increasing number of followers on McDonald’s Instagram, Twitter & TikTok accounts after the collaboration with BTS on April 2021. As per the reports, the daily average increase in followers were 1517 (Instagram), 4306 (Twitter) and 8027 (Tiktok) and the total followers of Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok followers drastically increased to 29,885, 72,914 and 23040. This meal promotion was definitely a jackpot hit for McDonald’s during the Covid-19 pandemic situation.
By adopting social proof tactics, the global food chain was able to get tremendous response across in different countries and their sales crossed the highest compared to the previous years.
3.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
Seeing the sales numbers of McDonald’s BTS Meal, it is clear that the brand has created a great buzz in the market post pandemic. But, I personally felt that they missed one of the most important tactic which is ‘Self Control’. Self Control or Self Regulation refers to the individual’s capacity to alter control and alter natural responses (Baumeister, R.F., 2002).
For this BTS Meal promotion, McDonald’s should have included some healthy options like burger made of wheat bun along with vegetables as it would have created a great impact in the mind of health-conscious people. The audience when seeing the ad would have got a positive feel that they will be consuming a nutritious meal.
Speaking about the ethical considerations for this particular ad, McDonald’s strictly followed the norms as covered in the Corporation’s Standards of Business Conduct document. For example, the ad did not mislead the customers and McDonald’s sticked to the claims and provided enough information about the meal (Barrett-Maitland, N. and Lynch, J., 2020).
They were also honest, transparent and offered what they promised. There was no misconduct and this meal promotion did not offend anyone in any manner. McDonald’s were also vigilant and responsible when it came to user data collection and they made sure not a single data was obtained without the consent of the user.
4.0 REFERENCES
Amblee, N. and Bui, T., (2011). Harnessing the influence of social proof in online shopping: The effect of electronic word of mouth on sales of digital microproducts. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 16(2), pp.91-114.
Barrett-Maitland, N. and Lynch, J., 2020. Social Media, Ethics and the Privacy Paradox. In Ethics, Laws, and Policies for Privacy, Security, and Liability. IntechOpen.
Baumeister, R.F., 2002. Yielding to temptation: Self-control failure, impulsive purchasing, and consumer behavior. Journal of consumer Research, 28(4), pp.670-676.
Cialdini, R.B., (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: First Edition, HarperCollins
Heo, J., Cho, CH. A new approach to target segmentation: Media-usage segmentation in the multi-media environment. J Target Meas Anal Mark 17, 145–155 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jt.2009.12
Jimenez-Zarco, Ana & Rospigliosi, Asher & Martinez-Ruiz, María Pilar & Yusta, Alicia. (2017). Marketing 4.0:. 10.4018/978-1-5225-2139-6.ch005. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312529239_Marketing_40
Koreaboo. 2022. McDonald's Explains Why The "BTS Meal" Is The Perfect New Partnership. [online] Available at: <https://www.koreaboo.com/news/bts-mcdonalds-explains-partnership-rolling-stone/> [Accessed 29 May 2022].
Medium. 2022. BTS Meal in Indonesia Case: How McDonald’s Turn the Crowd Into Engagement. [online] Available at: <https://girlskode.medium.com/bts-meal-in-indonesia-case-how-mcdonalds-turn-the-crowd-into-engagement-78b0db401e1b> [Accessed 29 May 2022].
TwistedFood. 2022. Someone's Actually Launched A Petition Because The McDonald's BTS Meal Isn't Available In The UK. [online] Available at: <https://twistedfood.co.uk/articles/mcdonalds-bts-meal-uk> [Accessed 29 May 2022].
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