This is of course the goldmine that McDonald's is tapping into. The authors also provide evidence that 'unhealthy' and 'tasty' work implicitly and can be controlled. In other words: making food healthier and still tasty, by giving them better information about what is healthy. Weight Watchers has been following this path successfully for years. McDonald's itself, however, just like its clientele, seems to be taking the easy way out. Like saying that their chickens come from certified suppliers. And without saying what good this certification brings. And so the Wakker Dier Foundation is cutting through.
Word cloud the brand roast of McDonald's.
We also asked who the typical user of McD is. They are still children and young people. But what kind? We saw statements like 'young, lazy and lazy' or 'young, fast, hopeless' and 'a bit of a fat person with greasy hair' and finally 'unhealthy, simple person who likes fatty food and who is susceptible to the marketing of McDonald's.' From research on image transfer we know that associations flow from one entity to another if the link is made and the associations are strong enough. Put the two word clouds together and you get the image that McDonald's is unhealthy and is especially for children. Because we also know that people like to honduras mobile number identify with a brand, you can call McDonald's a 'taboo brand' for many people. You may like it, but you don't want to be associated with it.
McDonald's and Keller's Brand Pyramid
High time to look at McDonald's scores on the different layers of Keller's brand pyramid. An American brand guru, so that should inspire confidence.
McDonald's and Keller's Brand Pyramid.
If we look at the good news for McDonald's, the high score for brand awareness is of course striking, the highest in our study of ten major brands. Even higher is the score for number of associations. And that's where the machine starts to falter. Because we are still moderately positive and also think McD has something unique, but that's it.
Negative on negative
Although this is a first study on this subject, Rick Boersen's master's thesis, 'Category problems: Identifying and managing unfavorable and not-unique brand associations' (2016) does shed some light. He investigated two categories, banks and fast food chains, for the presence of strongly negative, but not unique associations: category associations, every player in that category gets them 'automatically'.