McDonalds Ethnic Advertising: Effective or Offensive?

Media Meditation Number 7

McDonalds is one of the largest companies in the world, and they spend the advertising bucks to prove it. In 2009,“McDonald's spent $814 million" in multi-media advertising. It has gone through a million different makeovers, changing advertising methods and catch phrases frequently. Recently, the company settled on the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign (Talk about about repetition, I feel like a hear this all day every day). The campaign’s success is in part to the advertising geniuses behind it, DDB (and their international counter parts, Tribal DDB), and also to Mary Dillon, global chief marketing officer for McDonalds. So far, Ms. Dillon has made "I'm Lovin' It" her mission, rolling the campaign out to 118 countries, and working hard to make it relevant everywhere.”

This is a McDonalds commercial that aired in Hong Kong in 2003.

So how do they make this simple, universal slogan, something that people from everyone of the 118 countries it services invest something in it? The answer: ethnic advertising. Using a simply phrased, relatively low impact slogan allows the creative minds behind international and domestic McDonalds advertising to infuse ads with more ethnic “ties.”

An interesting article on Advertising Age said “The marketing at McDonalds is informed first and foremost by ethnic insights that shape the chain's marketing to African Americans, Asians and Hispanics.” And when you look at some of the statistics laid down by Neil Golden, chief marketer of McDonald’s USA, you can see why they choose to take this particular approach. “40% of McDonald's current U.S. business comes from the Hispanic, Asian and African-American markets, and 50% of consumers under the age of 13 are from those segments. "And they're among our most loyal users,"”

Finical results prove that this type of advertising is working. “Since 2002, he (Golden) said the U.S. business alone has grown by $10 billion, or $750,000 per restaurant. That translates into an additional 1.8 billion customer visits each year, or about 75,000 visits per restaurant. Restaurant cash flow has grown 50% over the same period.”

But has McDonalds taken this targeted advertising too far? See 365black.com, a user oriented website for McDonalds which “celebrates” African American culture 365 days a year.

Or how about Myinspirasian.com, a site that is meant to appeal to McDonalds Asian customers.

“The reality is that ethnic marketing is commonplace.” There’s no doubt that producers routinely use race or ethnicity to market their products. The race card is a very effective persuasive technique. This is a great example of the discursive shift that is going on in our media systems. While the people who concocted this site obviously think it is a good idea, there is a lot of outrage in the online community. There is even an online petition to boycott both McDonalds and 365black.com

But is this too much? Are ethnic advertising techniques effective beyond just recruiting customers, are they also increasing the racial divide? What is the value message that McDonalds is sending to it's huge customer base?

And is it fair for McDonald’s to say that their minority customers are the “most loyal” when in reality, it is the fact that a un-proportionate amount of minorities in the U.S. also live on or below the poverty line, limiting the options they have for feeding themselves or their children? When you only have a few dollars to feed a whole family, of course McDonald’s will be a place you’ll go again and again. I think that is pretty obvious example of reality construction.

This could become a frightening example of the hypodermic-needle model of media effects, when "the media shoot their potent effects directly into unsuspecting victims" (475). No one is thinking, I'm going to watch this racily targeted McDonald's ad and feel more alienated from other races, but with the saturation of McDonald's advertising, and there obvious attempt to target children as early as possible, it's not an unbelievable reality. This embodies the cultivation effect of media, that prompts "individuals to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with television portrayals" (481).

Or, is McDonalds just ahead of the curve, preparing for a United States that is does not have a white majority? Immigration has been slowly leveling out the white population. The 2020 census is predicted to show whites “at 79 percent,” which is still the majority, but those projections include those who consider themselves “Hispanic Whites.” Without the Hispanic White contribution, “the Bureau estimates that in the next fifteen years whites will fall to just sixty-four of every hundred Americans.”

So is McDonalds fueling the race fire, or just preparing for the future? My opinion is that yes, ethnic advertising may be effective, but advertisers should also be considering the effect on the community their ads have. Having separate websites for Blacks, Whites, and Asians is like digital segregation. No doubt the minds behind McDonalds ethnic advertising are brilliant, but their genius could be more aptly applied than being used to enhance racial boundaries. In a future where there is no racial majority, and Hispanics and Whites are of equal population, won’t ethnic advertising limit the market, ignoring a comparable demographic?