After the Canadian fast food chain A&W started launching a series of advertising campaigns focusing on the fact that they use antibiotic free chicken and sourced hormone-free beef, McDonald’s was quick to respond.

The fast food giant has opted for the slogan “The Big Mac? Not Without Canadian Farmers”. The response was rapid, authentic and precise. With this clever slogan, McDonald’s struck 2 birds with 1 stone.

The first one is the meaning behind the slogan, which is implying that some beef is better than others. It is a well placed innuendo as A&W has been focusing on marketing the procurement of their meat, and not their origin – hence, a very good retort one of their biggest Canadian competitor’s campaigns.Photo Source

Secondly, McDonald’s is garnering the faith we place on Farmers. We generally see farmers as modest, hardworking and honest people, and as such, McDonald’s is making use of this to passively associate themselves with these values. On top of this, “Canadian farmers” relate back to the sense of Canadian pride that the customers have. It indirectly links McDonald’s to them through this self-identification.

To top this off, McDonald’s has also sent out the motto ‘Our Food. You Questions’.  Photo Source

With this clever twist, they have started to eliminate popular myths about their sources of meat and their quality. It has started to focus on the transparency of their sources, which is in my opinion an excellent public address as people become more and more health conscious, and thus also conscious about the foods they eat and where it came from.

Against popular belief, McDonald’s is in fact turning into a company who wants to share the values its customers believe in – instead of  the unhealthy and uncaring one.

The blog post by Fion Yu was interesting to say the least. She wrote about Amazon extending its sales and delivery services to even groceries in the UK, trying to establish a new market for online grocery sales and providing one hour delivery service. I would like to add a few of comments of my own.

I find the point she raised about being there physically and choosing products to be a very good one. Customers enjoy extra value by being at the supermarkets themselves because they can choose the better item: ripe fruits, milk with later expiry date etc. However, despite how much of an advantage that would be, I believe that having a system in place that can help you make the best decision virtually is highly unfeasible at this stage of market expansion.

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Having said this, I think that the Focus Strategy (differentiation) Amazon is adopting  to enter the UK grocery market is a great choice for a well-placed niche.  Despite selling only generic everyday necessities, their service targets a very specific group of people who are too lazy/busy to go shopping themselves, while increasing the price for faster delivery eg. Amazon Prime costs $99 annually, one hour delivery services costs $8. It is rare to see a Focus strategy intent on differentiating their own services for mainstream products, and it is one worth looking up to.

Its been 2 full weeks since our Comm 101 class took place with the unexpected but pleasant visit and lecture by Prof. David Silver. He is a man who is very knowledgeable about business ethics and coorporate social responsibility, and so I expected him to focus on those. Instead, he started off with a question, ” What did you hire Sauder to do?” My head simply interpreted that as “what are the qualities of Sauder, UBC” and started thinking up answers.

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He gave the analogy of hiring a milkshake – one that I only understood thanks to this blog. The post took excerpts of an actual business research undertaken by McDonald’s,  where researcher Gerald Berstell examined the people going into McDonald’s to buy milkshakes. He noticed that a majority bought them in the mornings; alone; to go. With that, he asked why these people bought the milkshake, what was it they needed getting done – why did they hire it? Once he discovered that the customers wanted something sate their boredom and hold of the hunger until noon, the qualities of the milkshake were easy to pinpoint and the improvements to be made could be accurately targeted.

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The story of hiring a milkshake proved that asking the right questions is as important as interpreting the right answers, whether it be in business, in class or in life. “What did you hire Sauder to do?” took me by complete surprise, because we never phrase questions that way and it manipulated the perspective for more insightful answers. I believe that this is asking such questions will prove to be part of the bridge  between my goal and my achievements.