The cause of the incident is simple. Originated from McDonald's official Weibo who announced the company's name change notice:
Then "invited" several commercial internet media to report. ? Business news like this-strategic changes, personnel changes, product changes, name changes, etc. It is very common every day. However, because the new name is too interesting, the combination with the logo map has a faint "earthy taste", and netizens can play a lot of space, which has attracted much attention and quickly made headlines. ?
In recent years, there are many other companies registered or renamed similarly, which have successively contracted jokes from netizens and screened their circle of friends, such as Shenzhen Earn him 500 million Technology Co., Ltd., Chongqing Rennan Unbreakable E-commerce Co., Ltd. and Shenyang Honghuang Zhili Hotel Management Co., Ltd.. ..
First of all, we should popularize a basic knowledge here, such as restaurant name, brand name and company name, which are not the same thing. Although we call these unreliable names, it doesn't mean that the company will use this name when registering trademarks, producing products, offering courses and building factories in the future. ? So Golden Arch is just the company name of McDonald's China. The restaurant where we go to eat French fries is still called McDonald's. Golden Arch Company can't be stupid enough to change the name of the restaurant and abolish such a valuable trademark. Many people's surprise stems from not being able to tell the difference between a brand name and a company name. ?
Let's take a look at the strategic changes of several companies before, and none of them have reached this popularity. For example, not long ago, Ali announced the organization of the Dharma Institute to fully engage in technology. Except in Zhihu, a place where programmers gather, everyone chats on the official WeChat account and turns a few articles. Almost no one cares about Weibo and the official WeChat account, and no one cares so much. Prior to this, the official Chinese translation of Airbnb was determined as "Airbnb", which attracted little attention. Even if they pay attention, they curse the official fool X for taking such a meaningless translation, which not only does not add color to the corporate brand, but does not help. ?
This time, the news that McDonald's China Company changed its name to "Golden Arch" completely turned into a viral event. Numerous large-scale spontaneous requests for help and endless jokes made McDonald's famous for several days and crushed KFC in heat. From the marketing point of view, McDonald's can be said to be unexpected and caught off guard, but it also played a beautiful and successful brand war!
Why do you say that? This has to start with the marketing work of large enterprise groups.
In some to B industries, some companies don't have a marketing department, because there are not many customers, and they are all sales. There is no significance and necessity to set up a marketing department. For example, in the early days of Alibaba, Ma Yun didn't have Taobao and Alipay at that time, only China Yellow Pages, which was later renamed Alibaba. This is a trade information forum, mainly for business owners to publish supply and demand information on it. At that time, Ma Yun, a young man, mainly did two jobs: one was the hardest and most tiring job of selling and sweeping buildings, visiting office buildings in business districts and asking the other party to use their own websites to buy or even use their services for free; ? First, through the relevant channels of the industrial and commercial departments, get the company's registered name list, which contains the contact information of all registered company business owners, and then call each family. ? This business model does not need a marketing department at all.
But in the to C industry, the business model is completely different. At this time, it is impossible to set up a marketing department. For example, Coca-Cola may sell hundreds of millions of bottles a year, and it is impossible to sell so many bottles only by the sales team! ? They follow the model of agent plus retail, which is completely different from the sales method of the earliest trading industry. If consumers are not "brainwashed" in advance to let them know that there is a brand of Coca-Cola and that Coca-Cola has new products, even if their channels are strong enough to cover all supermarkets in the country, consumers may still not buy it. Because the soda area of the supermarket is definitely not only this brand of soda, but also Pepsi, Jianlibao and so on. Faced with so many choices, consumers will choose products with high brand awareness at this time. ? The establishment of this brand awareness is what the marketing department should do.
Speaking of the work done by the marketing department, it sounds easy to feel empty and make people wonder what this department does. What's the role? Even "marketing" has several definitions, such as kotler version and AMA version. Usually, graduates majoring in marketing probably don't know what the marketing department does, and they are not qualified for the marketing work. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the school curriculum is completely divorced from the actual work, which has little guiding effect on practice. ? Another equally important reason is that this book provides the theory of ideal situation, which is aimed at business owners and bosses. Not what an ordinary wage earner can do for the marketing department. Pay attention to this!
According to the basic division of labor of marketing department, there are three most important functions.
1 Promote sales;
2. Improve brand awareness;
How to spend the least money to get the maximum effect of the above two. ?
Yes, most of us can see that the existence of the marketing department is to burn money desperately. In order to achieve the first and second goals, the marketing department will apply for a budget and then spend money on a series of activities, which is called "campaign" in the jargon. It mainly includes two parts: online and offline. Below-the-line mainly uses traditional channels, such as TV stations, buses, subways and elevators. ? Online is the content, creativity, promotion and advertisement of Internet channels. Of course, marketing work goes far beyond activities, including planning, arrangement, practice, investigation, return visit and so on. Every activity is a systematic gameplay, including budgeting, planning, channel selection, time planning and delivery. The practice with internet thinking also includes data feedback and recovery after delivery, summary and adjustment iteration, etc. , is the whole process of work.
Therefore, Wang (a large and medium-sized enterprise) seems to be busy all day: 1 making reports, because he needs budget and KPI data statistics afterwards; 2. Write a plan book, because it persuades leaders and companies to pass the budget through proposals; 3 write PPT, because the meeting should be shown to the leaders, and the annual debriefing should also be explained to the company, and it is only after passing the customs; 4 meetings, meetings, meetings, after the meeting ... 5. Development, contact and communication of media channels; Market research companies and advertising companies should contact, have meetings and have tea, because when the task comes, they can find a job immediately; 7. Meetings, exhibitions, activities, business trips, business trips all over the country ......
Knowing the function, work and function of the marketing department, we can understand why McDonald's renaming event can be called a brand war with great victory. There are three reasons: 1 For such an online activity, although McDonald's may not have thought of turning it into an activity, it really caught fire and became a viral spread; Brand communication is extremely extensive, which strengthens the impression of the brand in the hearts of netizens again and again; The offline conversion rate will definitely have an obvious peak, and many people in the circle of friends have begun to say that they want to go to the Golden Arch Hotel for dinner. ?
Many people here have always had a misunderstanding that an already large company like McDonald's no longer needs marketing promotion. This is very wrong. There is a dynamic causal relationship between marketing and company scale: it is because of continuous marketing that the company can maintain such a large scale, and once the publicity fails to keep up, the company brand will soon be dim and no longer known, thus being strangled by competitors. ? Many brands that used to be very popular and then disappeared in the rivers and lakes can be understood according to this logic. ?
Looking back, is the upsurge of renaming McDonald's simply the spontaneous behavior of netizens? Is there any official deliberate guidance? ? Let's try to review the rhythm of the whole movement-on the day when McDonald's just announced its name change, the overall public opinion tendency was not ridicule and joy, but direct scolding:
However, on the morning of the 26th, the overall wind direction changed rapidly, and numerous tubas began to make up paragraphs and circulated to the circle of friends. ? For example, "fast food only eats the golden arch, and you only love one person in your life", and there are similar picture jokes:
The public opinion turned around at 180 degrees, and the whole people were playing with stalks, and basically no one called names anymore. We don't know whether there is an official effort of McDonald's behind this. In any case, it turns out that McDonald's doesn't need to spend money to let countless Weibo and WeChat official accounts tuba compete for automatic reporting, and spontaneously arrange various jokes, such as the "fine arch" of Durex, a hot creative god. However, it should be noted that this marketing number seems to be marketing itself in a hot spot. In fact, it is advertising McDonald's for free, helping McDonald's to strengthen its brand awareness in the hearts of consumers over and over again, which is not helpful to its own brand and products. Visually, the amount of reading about McDonald's and its marketing ideas in Weibo and WeChat official accounts has created at least hundreds of millions of exposures, which can be said to be the KPI of McDonald's marketing department in the second half of the year!
Using hot marketing may become an excellent marketing activity, and an activity that makes hot spots by itself can be called perfect!