The McRib is back

One of the best marketing stunts dusts off the cobwebs.

Five straight days of rain leading into “the most important election of our lifetimes”™ hasn’t unconvinced me that we are indeed Muggles and there are wizarding things afoot. (I started reading Harry Potter to my 6-year-old, so, sorry!)

Speaking of wizardry, let’s talk about some marketing magic.

For the first time since 2012, which also happens to be the last time I had a clean-shaven face, McDonald’s is bringing back the McRib for the whole country. Each year, the McRib hits “participating” McDonald’s locations, which is great for McRib-lovers in those areas, but wholly unsatisfying for others.

(Image via Robson90 / Shutterstock)

In the digital age, however, the salivating McRib fan base can use the 1s and 0s of the internet to hunt down those participating restaurants: the McRib locator.

And while the Cult of the McRib has been a thing for a while, in an age where social platforms exacerbate passions, bringing the McRib to all of the people at this particular moment in time is just, well, fun. And we can all use some fun.

Just ask McDonald’s social media manager.

Last Friday, the person operating the QSR’s Twitter account dropped this:

McDonald's @McDonalds

it’s always “when is the McRib coming back” and never “how are you doing person who runs the McDonald’s account”

Which, accordingly, kickstarted a conversation between brands about mental health. One of the artifacts of this era of the internet will be the anthropomorphization of multi-billion-dollar corporations through the avatar of Twitter and Facebook posts. Brand-on-brand dalliances are now the norm.

But lest we forget, and apologies for being a wet blanket (I know; I just said we can all use some fun), a brand’s presence on social media is just another marketing tool. They are selling something. Image. Product. Whatever.

Posts aren’t willy-nilly; they are carefully constructed with multiple hands and eyes. Sure, some have leeway to tweet at will, but with companies investing millions of dollars into their social teams, it’s unlikely that we see an errant tweet.

Except for that one time when U.S.Airways blessed us with their, um, preferences of where planes should park. I’ll let you Google that one if you don’t know what I’m talking about. And make sure your kids aren’t by you.

The point is this: nothing happens by accident on marketing channels, especially from multi-billion, multinational corporations.

Another interesting aspect of the McRib-as-marketing-stunt is that McDonald’s has brilliantly created an ideal product solely by not having it available to everyone.

As Bloomberg wrote at the beginning of the month:

It’s not about “good taste,” either: The appeal is an instinct hardwired into the human brain. “As things are unavailable, we’ve learned we need to fight harder to get them,” says Kelly Goldsmith, a behavioral scientist and associate professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University whose research focuses on scarcity. “Whether that’s bison meat when we were cave people or A grades at school when you’re marked on a curve.”

Ok, back to fun for a second. In 2018, the website OfDollarsAndData ran a tongue-in-cheek post to teach a valuable lesson between causation and correlation, using the McRib and the S&P 500, and found:

One last thing to consider: earned media. I have a running theory that if you take out Burger King, AB InBev and Ryan Reynolds, advertising trade media would have nothing to write about.

Burger King wins awards, gets lots of fawning coverage for its marketing, but rarely does anyone look into how well the business is doing. The industry knows Burger King’s CMO Fernando Machado (for example: 4350 search results for “Fernando Machado” on Adweek via Google); but do they know McDonalds’ US CMO Morgan Flatley (744 results for “Morgan Flatley” on Adweek via Google)?

Conversely, McDonald’s rarely gets covered for its ads or marketing. Perhaps that’s because it’s ubiquitous five-note run has been with us since 2003. Though its recent collaboration with Travis Scott, which created such demand that the company was running out of ingredients, and now, the McRib, bucks that trend.

But what we can see is that McDonald’s continues to be the global QSR leader not because of its advertising, but because it uses all the levers of marketing to drive sales: social media and traditional advertising, yes, but also consider its restaurants and menu as marketing tools.

McDonald’s bought Dynamic Yield in 2019 for $300 million to beef up its personalization capabilities.

AdExchanger:

McDonald’s says it’s planning to use the technology to speed up its digital transformation, personalizing the customer experience by changing drive-thru menu displays based on real-time signals, such as the time of day, trending food items or current restaurant traffic, or cross-selling customers based on their current order.

But there’s a lot more to personalization than that, said Brendan Witcher, a VP and principal analyst at Forrester.

“Personalization is about making it personal for me as an individual,” he said. “The ability to really know that it’s me, to know my shopping behavior across channels – that is how you get to great personalization, not because you recommend an apple pie at dinner time but not when it’s breakfast time.”

That’s why McDonald’s’ move is a customer data play, Witcher said, “an attempt to understand the customer in a world that’s becoming more and more digitally ubiquitous.”

Before the pandemic, McDonald’s also transformed its in-dining areas, investing $6 billion since 2018 to “modernize.”

According to the L.A. Times:

McDonald’s is modernizing its dining rooms, installing new digital menu boards and providing self-order kiosks inside its restaurants, among other improvements.

The kiosks and remodeled counters also will provide for expanded table service, in which McDonald’s workers bring the food to customers.

These can all fall under marketing operations. The customer experience is a marketing lever, just as much as a social media account.

Especially a social media account that teases a beloved, hard-to-get sandwich one week, and then, like a jazz musician bringing the jam back to the head, comes full circle the next week:

McDonald's @McDonalds

good morning to everyone who asked how i was doing last week and to everyone else...McRib is back 12.2

Thank you for allowing me in your inbox today, and every day. If you have tips, thoughts on the newsletter, or want to send me a McRib, send me an email. Or you can follow me on Twitter. If you appreciated this edition, please consider sharing across your social networks and get your colleagues to sign up. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back tomorrow. Happy Halloween, and final weekend of the 2020 campaign season. Be smart; be safe; be healthy. Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading!

Phish, “Most Events Aren’t Planned”

Some interesting links
For shit that should scare you

• How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge (NBC News)

• Virtual influencers make more real money while Covid locks down human stars (Bloomberg)

• Trolling for truth on social media (Scientific American)

For social media junkies:

• The k zone: the week's best meme about the famous family is not the one you already know about (Brian Feldman)

• Here’s Exactly Why That Viral Trump Impression Is the Best Trump Impersonation Ever (Slate)

For media criticism:

• Chuck Todd asks if Joe Biden is taking coronavirus “too seriously” (Mediaite)

For platforms:

• Dan Bongino Has No Idea Why Facebook Loves Him (NYT)

For reporters throwing tantrums about getting edited:

• My Resignation From The Intercept (Greenwald)

For are you ready for the Super Bowl?

• Super Bowl ad talks heat up, with big decisions looming for advertisers (Adweek)

For a coda on a long career:

• Political cartoonist Tom Toles’s final panel (Twitter)