For Prosperity Burger, McDonald's Tailors Ads to Asian Tastes
McDonald's Corp. is going regional in its Asian marketing, a first for the world's largest restaurant chain as it seeks economies of scale while appealing to local tastes in the battle for Asian palates.
In nine countries from South Korea to Indonesia, McDonald's this month is rolling out the Prosperity Burger, a nod to the Lunar New Year celebrated with different holidays across the region. The campaign brings the same promotional spicy burger, as well as shared TV advertisements, to all 2,200 restaurants around the region, outside of Japan. McDonald's plans to spend $4 million on media buys for ads touting the prosperity theme.
"This is about pooling and sharing our resources," says Peter Tan , McDonald's president of greater China.
The regional campaign is part of McDonald's struggle with a problem that vexes multinational marketers: Should advertising be local, global -- or somewhere in between? Companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. use panregional marketing in Asia to sell shampoo and other products, but McDonald's foray is unusual in the fast-food game.
In September 2003, McDonald's abandoned its longstanding strategy of creating independent advertising for each country when it united all of its markets under the "I'm Lovin' It" theme -- which continues today in all McDonald's marketing, including the prosperity campaign. The company even produced a TV ad shown around the globe. The global approach was designed to unify the messages seen by travelers and company employees, as well as to spread ad-production costs across many markets.
But one-size-fits-all is a pickle in Asia, where ads that don't make sense across vastly different cultures and tastes can translate into bad business. Even under "I'm Lovin' It," local Asian markets have continued to make some local ads, occasionally sharing resources -- between Hong Kong and Taiwan, for instance. The Asian prosperity campaign is McDonald's attempt to have its cake and eat it, too.
The challenge for McDonald's and ad agency Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett was to develop a single regional campaign that could work as well as past local ones. Only in greater China and its diaspora do consumers celebrate Chinese New Year, which takes place on Feb. 9. "That made this a pretty difficult brief," says Mark Blears, regional McDonald's brand director for Leo Burnett.
"Rather than focusing on a particular celebration," Mr. Blears says, "we decided to focus on the consumer. What universal human insight might link people that can transcend nationalities and borders?"
Most Asian cultures mark the Lunar New Year with some event that looks toward good luck in the future. The resulting product: an ad featuring a boy who needs better luck fishing. His brother passes him a beef Prosperity Burger -- which looks like a variation on the restaurant's McRib sandwich -- and his fortunes change, culminating in the arrival of a computer-generated whale. Burnett tested the ad with each local market and made numerous tweaks to the language, music, icons -- like firecrackers -- and frequency of product shots.
"Rather than every market working on the same project with small budgets," Mr. Blears says, McDonald's combined resources "to get a more extraordinary single piece of advertising."
The inspiration for the campaign came from Malaysia, a multiethnic country in Southeast Asia that includes large populations of Malays, Chinese and Indians. McDonald's restaurants there had been selling and marketing a version of the Prosperity Burger in recent years as a unified way to promote the season for customers who celebrated Chinese New Year as well as other holidays.
But are smaller local markets like the Philippines, which don't celebrate the season as much as China does, now getting stuck with a less-targeted ad? The goal, executives say, isn't to spend less money on advertising but to maximize the production value of the result. "It's a question of balance," Mr. Blears says.
Another obstacle: McDonald's customers in markets like Korea and China don't physically look like ones far away in the Philippines and Indonesia. Again, Malaysia provided an answer: Burnett filmed and hired its cast there, emphasizing a spectrum of ethnicities
麦当劳招财汉堡专为亚洲而制
麦当劳(McDonald's Corp.)首次在亚洲地区的市场营销活动中采取了地区化策略，公司正在极力迎合亚洲消费者的口味，并寻求获得规模经济效应。
本月麦当劳在韩国、印度尼西亚等亚洲9个国家推出了招财汉堡(Prosperity Burger)，这是公司专门为迎接亚洲地区农历新年而准备的。在此次活动中，麦当劳在全亚洲除日本以外的2,200家餐厅同时推出这款新的辣味汉堡，并采用相同的电视宣传广告。麦当劳计划拿出400万美元为此次活动进行推广。
麦当劳大中华区总裁陈必得(Peter Tan)表示，公司希望实现资源的整合和共享。
很多公司的跨国营销都面临这样的问题是：广告宣传是要本地化还是要全球化、或是介乎二者之间？麦当劳此次地区营销活动是解决这一问题的一次尝试。宝洁公司(Procter & Gamble Co., 又名:宝硷公司)等公司在亚洲市场使用的是统一的地区营销策略，不过这种尝试在快餐行业还并不多见。
2003年9月，麦当劳摒弃了长期使用的、为每个国家单独制作广告的策略，在所有市场统一开展“我就喜欢”(I'm Lovin' It)品牌宣传活动，并一直延用至今，这次招财汉堡的推广也不例外。该公司甚至在全球各地播放同样的电视广告。这种全球化的做法旨在统一形象，使旅行者和全球雇员都看到同样的麦当劳，另一方面也便于广告成本在各个市场的分摊。
不过这种一刀切的做法在亚洲会面临窘境，亚洲各地文化和口味相距甚远，不成功的广告会带来糟糕的销售业绩。即使在“我就喜欢”的品牌活动中，公司在亚洲也还是不断推出了一些本地化的广告，有时会让几个市场共享同一广告，如香港和台湾。麦当劳期望此次推出的招财汉堡活动能在全亚洲铺开。
麦当劳和Publicis Groupe旗下广告公司李奥贝纳(Leo Burnett)面临的一个挑战是，如何在整个亚洲地区推出一项促销活动，让它能取得和过去在各地分别进行促销相同的效果？只有大中华地区及海外华人会庆祝2月9日的农历新年。李奥贝纳负责麦当劳地区品牌业务的负责人布利尔斯(Mark Blears)说，这使得针对节日搞促销组织起来十分困难。
布利尔斯说：“我们还是决定让广告以顾客为中心，而不是针对特定的节日，采用能够跨越国界、符合人类共识的创意理念。”
在多数亚洲国家，人们在农历新年到来时都会以各种方式祈求来年的好运，于是麦当劳有了这样一个广告创意：一个小男孩运气不好，钓不上鱼，他的哥哥递给他一个牛肉口味的招财汉堡，于是他的运气开始好起来，广告以一只电脑制作的鲸鱼缓缓游来作为结尾。李奥贝纳在每个市场都试播了这个广告，并对语言、音乐、图标以及产品出现的频次进行了多次的调整。
布利尔斯说，麦当劳并没有分别在不同的市场对同一个产品进行低成本的推广，而是将资源整合起来，集中制作一个更出色的广告。
麦当劳推出招财汉堡的灵感最早来自于马来西亚，它是东南亚一个多种族的国家，有大量的马来人、中国人和印度人。当地麦当劳餐厅在近几年中国农历新年或其他节日到来时都会推出一种“招财汉堡”，作为节日促销活动。
不过，像菲律宾等一些规模较小的亚洲市场并不像中国这样隆重庆祝这一节日，这样一个针对性不是很强的广告能吸引这些市场的顾客吗？麦当劳管理人士称，此类广告的目的并不在于节约广告支出，而是要使广告产生最大的效果。布利尔斯说，这是一个平衡的问题。
另外还有一个障碍，韩国和中国等市场的顾客与远在菲律宾和印尼的顾客在外形上有很大不同。马来西亚又一次为此提供了解决之道：李奥贝纳将广告拍摄和演职员的挑选都定在马来西亚进行，从而强调了种族的多样化。
