How McDonald’s (and others) Can Find Their Way Back

There have been a lot of articles talking about the big challenges McDonald’s faces and how they are trying to find their way back to dominance in the fast food industry. Much of the discussion has been around their new ad agency and how they have been getting a lot wrong lately.

We could dissect this situation and pick it apart for many months to come and at the end we would be left with a pile of bones and no real answers. You see, from my perspective, it is actually quite simple. One key issue is that they are trying to be all things to all people…this doesn’t work at all today in our highly personalized world where every consumer can essentially get what they want when they want it when it comes to products. This isn’t the answer…and coming up with different sizes that the market doesn’t even know that they want truly misses the mark by a big distance.

And coming to the show late with offering breakfast items all day is a mere bandaid in the scheme of things. This isn’t new and it isn’t leading…it’s reactionary to their competitors and complaints from customers (for many years). This might increase some short term revenue but it’s going to do nothing to bring them back to dominance.

So why do I think this is simple? There’s a movie set to come out talking about the life of founder Ray Kroc and the birth of McDonald’s…let’s start there since it helps us see how they lost their way.

McDonald’s was built on being awesome! They came up with a model to deliver mediocre food quickly and with an experience. Customers enjoyed eating in as much as using the drive through experience. And as they added playgrounds and happy meals with toys and fun activities inside the meals they continually added to the experience. Food remained mediocre and even when they added some new products they weren’t anything spectacular. You could always get a better burger from the local burger joint. But as they kept growing their experience they kept adding more and more loyal customers.

Sure, there were lots of other burger places…most of which served better food than McDonald’s but people still wanted to go to McDonald’s…especially their kids. The kids didn’t care about the quality of the food they wanted to play, meet up with friends, get a happy meal and trade toys…and have fun. And yes they ate the burger and fries along the way.

To me, McDonald’s lost their way when they lost sight of this simple phenomenon…the experience their customers had at McDonald’s. No one ever came for the food and they still don’t…you can get a better version of whatever they serve somewhere else…their food is a low end commodity. What you can’t get anywhere else is the experience they used to offer. They missed it…their big agency missed it…and leadership seems to be missing it!

They forgot about what it’s like to be AWESOME!

If McDonald’s made a strategic decision to go back to being an experience for people they have a shot at being on top again. It’s really that simple…they just aren’t seeing it at the moment.

Let me paint a scenario of what might happen if they started delivering an awesome experience and stopped worrying about the product. To keep it simple, let’s say they have two groups of customers…those that continually use the drive through windows to get their food and families. If they focused on just these two segments they could create some remarkable experiences around these where both audiences would love to come back over and over and would go out of their way to tell their friends.

Take the drive through window experience. If you think this is an experience in ordering efficiency you are missing the point of an awesome customer experience. Sure, you have to be efficient and accurate with your handling of orders people give you…that’s a basic tenant of drive through ordering. But what could they do to enhance the experience to the customer? What could they do so the customer would say, “WOW, ordering in the drive through is unlike anyone else in the industry…this is actually fun and entertaining?”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. I could come up with at least 20 things that would enhance this experience and create this reaction. Some simple, like how they interacted with the person when they were ordering. Think Southwest Airlines and how they deliver the pre-flight speeches. They could do it like all the others or they could make it fun and something people look forward to. McDonald’s could create a version of this and have some fun and entertain their customers. It isn’t rocket science…it’s having a CUSTOMER OBSESSION focus.

Look at the second audience…families. There are so many things they could do to enhance the family experience so that the kids would throw a tantrum if their parents didn’t take them to McDonald’s. And think of it as a “community gathering place” where people actually wanted to meet up instead of their local Starbucks…because it is kid friendly as well. They could completely change the way people view McDonald’s and actually look forward to going there socially instead of to eat.

And the best part of all of these ideas is that the food doesn’t need to change. It can still be the mediocre low end commodity product they sell today…it isn’t why they are going. They can always improve the product and offerings, but without the complete change of the experience, it’s just competing in a commodity world of fast food…and that’s a tough game to win.

So rather than worrying about offering 3 different sizes of Big Mac’s and breakfast all day, McDonald’s needs to fire their agency and hire a team of people that can figure out how to get back to their roots Ray started and become CUSTOMER OBSESSED. This would have more impact on their bottom line and give them a chance to once again be the dominant fast food chain in the world. Will they take on this challenge or just keep trying to win in the food commodity space. It will be interesting to watch. But without some major changes in personnel and vision, don’t expect much more than a fancier Big Mac.