Brand Focus: Why is McDonald’s All Things to All People?

Last Friday, as I sat down with my coffee and my latest edition of Ad Age, I was quickly drawn to an article titled “The (Burger) World Is Not Enough For McDonald’s”. The article takes a look at McD’s push to become a beverage destination in order to get a bigger slice of the $153 billion U.S. beverage market. In 2006, they launched their premium coffee, followed by espresso, frappe’s, iced tea, hot chocolate, and smoothies (launches this month) in the following years.

This has really had me thinking over the last week, how can McDonald’s sell everything (breakfast, burgers, chicken, salads, coffee, smoothies, etc.) and still remain a strong brand? How is it that such a strategy has kept McD’s at the top, but been the downfall of so many others (i.e. Boston Market). That is, how can McDonald’s be all things to all people?

On the surface, McDonald’s looks like the very anti-thesis of focus.

» They offer healthy options such as salads, but they also have French fries if you care to indulge.

» They have cheap hamburgers, but they also sell their premium Angus burgers.

» They target children with happy meals and playgrounds, but they also target adults with free WiFi and frozen espresso beverages.

Based on that evidence, McDonald’s sure doesn’t look like a very focused brand. But (as I wrote about here) the best brands in the world focus on one big thing. For McDonald’s that one big thing is being the world’s favorite place to eat.

Like other “focused” brands such as Apple or Nike, you can’t really pinpoint the focus of the McDonald’s brand. That’s because the great brands are increasingly becoming a bundle of meanings, not a single idea.

To the naked eye this bundle of benefits looks like a strategy to be all things to all people, but looking through a different lens you can see that it is actually focus at its best.