McDonalds & Family Guy

I shouldn't say this given my pseudo Neo-Marxist and anti Globalist/Corporate sentiment but I'm fascinated by McDonalds. No really; practically obsessed with them and particularly their breakfasts which (when I wrote this post and put it in the draft folder) I'm just waiting for some jeans to tumble dry (naughty given I'm in the tropics) and then I'm off for one of the finest precision breakfasts on the planet. The Sausage and Egg McMuffin with hash brown and coffee. I've also been squeezing in a couple of hot cakes with syrup after but you don't need to know that, because I really don't want to think about it.

So let's start as we mean to go on and shoot straight, because I think what McDonalds knows about themselves and what they don't know about themselves is the gap that I'd like to help them out on if a chance avails itself which is unlikely given I have a problem with Ronald McDonald. He's got to go; or at least maybe lose the clown suit, the make up, the big feet, the voice and that fucking red wig. I mean, we all know that a person better have a great personality if they have ginger pubes in much the same way that if born black in American it's a good idea to stay as far away from the law enforcement officers and their testosterone pumped, steroidal spiked aggression issues. That doesn't mean I don't like red hair. On the contrary; along with a Jewish Princess girlfriend I alway keep an eye open. You know, just in case.

 

I will come back to Family Guy a lot more, because when Faris wrote a while back that sport and religion have a wider remit than just playful competition and spiritual fulfilment I agreed with him and then some. I wrote back here that I think football performs an interesting social function when observed as conversation in pubs, and say, back-of-taxi discussions. I'll be using Family Guy for the same purpose in the future, as a tool, but first I should explain that even though I've only watched Season Five I'm convinced I'll be able to explain a lot of stuff using these types of clips that don't really exist legally on Youtube and yet are a poweful way for content producers to 'showcase' their stuff in much the same way as advertising works.

The one above serves it's purpose for me to dramatise police agression and also introduces some more people to Family Guy. If FOX were smarter they'd have every known  humorous scenario of 5-10 second clips available on a searchable database for free so that people could use it to explain stuff. Same applies to the Simpsons or indeed any content such as the ghastly Friends or infinitely hipper Seinfeld. Both of which I've never watched much of but get the gist.

Back to McDonalds because I read this tweet earlier by Saul Kaplan who I often disagree with, but more in terms of scope than sentiment. The thing is that while it's easy to bash McDonalds for being the archetypical globalised brand with rapacious corporate in-sustainability, it is not so well know that McDonalds is one of the more progressive global brands when it comes to moving in the right direction. Sure they may have some farming methods which are mind boggling huge but they actively work on their responsibilities much harder than many so called mega corporate brands. We too have our responsibilities as I wrote back here and I've been using the same plastic knife and fork they give out as it's no trouble to reuse.

But what really excites me about McDonalds is that I think they are one of the few brands that almost ticks off the religious devotion that is, like my breakfast addiction, probably irrational and yet as I've learned in many different countries I think McDonalds also has the ubiquity of understanding globally that means it's here to stay and which is why I want to be on the inside and not on the outside.

Let me explain.

All over the planet I will have problems asking for different basic words in different languages. My Cantonese is rubbish so I'm struggling to ask for essential things like 'water', or 'food' or 'somewhere to sit down' or 'coffee', and yet it doesn't matter where I am on the planet, even if the country has no McDonalds. Everybody understands what I mean. It's global language and that is a powerful idea which we need to nurture and try to work on so that it retains some sense of dignity and that too is where I get excited about McDonalds.

I first got to thinking about this stuff the last time I was in Hong Kong because I have a deep respect for a global franchise that hires a person with learning difficulties. I've blogged about this elsewhere but can't find it in either posts or comments so I need to repeat that when enjoying (and I do enjoy them) a Sausage and Egg McMuffin with Hash Brown and Coffee I think it's great that while I'm not quite so comfortable having my table wiped by someone with learning difficulties, who reminds me of the sadness in the world, I'm moved and humbled by brands that employ people with challenges in life, who might otherwise remain anonymous and day by day lose their ability to integrate with the world. So thanks for that McDonalds because I respect you and your more open minded employment policy. But there's also a lot more to you.

I was reminded only a couple of weekends ago on a Ferry ride away in Aberdeen, Hong  Kong because I got talking to more local Cantonese than any other time in my life. The Chinese are often held to be inscrutable but in my experience public life interaction is culturally different and like any other culture there's always going to be a latent resentment of other dominant cultures. But the subject is massive so don't sound-bite me on that or even thin slice me because I've got a massive post brewing on handwritten paper to try and flesh that topic out and it's both enormously sensitive and one of the trickiest to tip toe around without sounding like a pampered white boy - which I am. It does need typing up first though.

My first conversation with a retired but smartly dressed Chinese guy nearly made me fall off my stool. He paid no attention to the black nail varnish I've occasionally been wearing this year or even my silly hat and scarves affectation I've moved on to.  But for Asians they mean a lot, because the nail that sticks out gets hammered in and yet this chap proceeded to engage in broken English conversation. After introducing myself and explaining a little of what I do, he did something that is anathema for many people let alone an elderly Asian gent having a conversation with Gweilo as we're referred to in this part of the world (it means ghost and is semiotically up there with Farang in Thailand though like Thailand, it's ubiquity has softened it's tonality).

He explained to me that his son was lazy. That his son's wife was fat and that they both were not working full time although his son had some cancer that prevented him from working some times. He described to me how fat the wife was and how they both turned up at his house religiously each evening for a cooked meal that his own wife had prepared because they were too lazy to do so themselves. He didn't explain it with malice. It was pure matter of fact and then he went on to describe that he was disappointed in his son who had received an education in England and from his not unreasonable Engineers salary had received a reasonable number of opportunities in life. I couldn't help but correlate that I was his own sons age and that we had talked about how I could be so mobile. It was  a lovely converation while we drank our coffee together waiting for his wife to return from a bit of shopping in an area that I can only reference as being the Bull Ring of Hong Kong in terms of it's urban tonality and yet oddly enough I noticed it was completely void of teenagers. Babies and Pensioners yes. But no teens.

I guess it was me going back for some more of those hot cakes with that maple syrup they do which t led to my next encounter. Sitting next to me was a young and attractively dressed woman with two gorgeous toddlers clambering all over the seats and demanding attention in that way only really cute kid can pull off without appearing tiresome and boy these two kids were cute. We got talking and the mother used the opportunity to remind the lovely little urchins that they were both doing English at school  and so could say hello and give me their names. I spoke briefly to the mother who I admired because it was evident she was working in some capacity during the week, taking care of her children and both managed to look presentable as well as having delightfully cute kids. The apple hadn't fallen far from the tree in this instance.

I've no idea why I knew she worked in the week but it's a skill I've picked up over the years reading peoples clothes to know this sort of thing. Lots of little indicators like the watch, shoes, makeup and accessories. Accessories tell us a lot if we look hard enough.

Anyway, mission accomplished I dispensed with the ferry ride back and caught a bus into Hong Kong central as I'm determined to cover as much ground as possible while I'm here and get to know the whole place. The bit that kept me ticking over was the good luck to have proper interaction with locals. There's little chance that I could have done this with both a young mother and an elderly gent in places like Starbucks or Pret a manger and it's that social interaction permission that I think is a powerful part of the future of McDonalds because they've nailed all that outstanding value breakfasts which cut right through demographics and geography. I think it's time to start figuring out both more of the role they play in the social fabric of all the communities that they fulfill a role in. Which in this age is really a highly fractured and increasingly atomised nuclear family structure. The ability to faciliate more meaning in the world means, I believe, that they need more meaning management. Something I'm quite keen to do for them.

The Economist

I need to call The Economist in London or Singapore by June 9th in preparation for a subsequent telephone call with the brilliant 'Nonsense'. I've found a little countdown widget from a really good new Web 2.0 site for the Lynx Effect that will help me remember (and you too if you need a widget to remember something).

China 2.0

Here's what I would do if I was serious about marketing in China. China has the largest internet population in the world, and it's still growing. The shift from television screens to internet screens on computers or mobile phones is the largest media exodus ever. More people will engage with the internet on a mobile phone in China first than in any other country. The numbers go on for ever really. China is all about the numbers.

However Chinese internet isn't really Web 2.0 yet. The Western model of identity and profile through Facebook and Myspace et al simple doesn't work here, but use of BBS is unbelievably masssive. I wrote about it over on Kaiser Kuo's excellent digital China blog some weeks ago here. The most dangerous focus group topic I ever raised was identity versus anonymity here in Beijing with quite progressive University students. Even mentioning that 99.9% of China's internet voice is completely anonymous on Bulletin Boards (BBS) against the thought of 'appearing' on the net as themselves was enough to silence a room full of respondents with fear, as if I were interviewing them for Komitet Gosudarstvenoi Bezopasnosti in Soviet Russia. I'm not exaggerating.

Whether its the State, or the group or the family there's something about being identified or attaching a face to content that terrifies Chinese folk. Face is a big deal in Asia. However the internet is a very valuable and highly appreciated part of middle class Chinese ability to express themselves and articulate their thoughts. Sure a lot of it is flame wars but I think we all know that flaming is part of growing up on the net. Its not hard to wind people up via the interweb is it? Once that realization is discovered, we tend to move on. Possibly to identity/reputation management which is definitely the new game in town now that Google is in charge.

So here's the thing. 70% of Chinese BBS is built on a platform called Discuz which is owned by Comsenz. They just had another million bucks thrown at them by those guys at Google. Now the killer thing about Discuz is that it is partially open source. Open source is almost an heretical idea in Asia. The notion of 'sharing' is antithetical to the Asian mindset. Secrets and information are valued beyond anything else to the point that sometimes it would appear that some would prefer suffocation than sharing their oxygen supply with other parties. I really mean that, it also explains a lot of the copy mentality that exists in this part of the world. That's the irony to the insane fixation on secrets and not sharing stuff; nobody does anything really new and so everyone is watching everyone else to see if an incremental change or new direction is taken. It also explains why only one or two Asian brands, including Japan have brands that stand out.

But with Discuz there is an opportunity to create a mini platform between profile driven social networks and BBS topic driven net activity. I would suggest writing some code for some widgets to sit on top of Discuz driven BBS and then we have a half way house to facilitate cross networking of BBS and profile/identity management that exist with traditonal social networking sites. I'd even go so far as to encourage all the flamers to pick up a new moniker and treat it like they're in front of their family at all times. Like it's their new 'face'. ....Start afresh like!

So the trick now is to figure out where brands should hang out on the net with their customers and their respective communities. Nobody actually has a full breakdown of this information although Sam from See I See/China Internet Word of Mouth knows more than most.

A proposal I made was to do a standard quantitative research project of the top 500 BBS communities on the Chinese net. If that seems like a lot then hold steady because China is massive and there's more. I think the top 500 BBS communites across the metrics of 'most affluent', 'most populous' and 'most influential' would make sense. Then I would segment all those groups across the usual community interests that advertisers are most interested in, moms and families, car lovers, tech lovers, political, travel and all the usual useful-in-a-rough and-ready-way segmentation seen on those standard tick boxes we are asked to fill in when we subscribe to internet services.

Once this 'new digital media planning data' is available I'd then put forward a China 2.0 media plan. Using the fundamentals of Transmedia Planning and some viral work that embraced volume seeding, Lo-Fidelity video and the upside of risk, as talked about back here in the post Black Swan (and here too) I'd think about developing a plan for engaging with existing customers and potential customers on the basis of being interesting or useful to them. That plan should be strategically built on a broadcast to narrowcast basis or vice versa depending on the rationale for engaging/reenforcing something at an internet dialogue level first or television's monologue model. Its quite exciting when I start to think about creative briefs written with the net first or telly first as a rolling narrative direction. Lots of opportunities there.

The only part I'm still trying to figure out is how to 'represent' in those tens or hundreds of 'communities' on the net where it's important to be useful or interesting for specific clients and their needs. I've given it some thought and my instinct is to identify the people who are most active in and respected in the community. The trick is NOT to buy them, because they then lose their authority and respect (Shills they scream!), but to build up their reputation by giving them the ability to 'share' through either reputation enhancements of information sharing or favour dispensation such as Skype credits or Taboa (China's Ebay) coupons as an idea. It's crucial that all actions are transparent, open, honest and authentic otherwise it all falls apart. Brands aren't very good at that short list of Web 2.0 guidelines and it explains why most marketing 1.0 peeps and planners 1.0 types don't get it.

Ideas like the one above are unlikely to be implented here though any day soon. One of the most frustrating aspects of working in developing economies is just how many bad habits are picked up from the West and then applied cookie cutter style over here. The advertising format is pretty much the same for lazy/untalented marketers and agencies (insert pretty model with product implying that you too can be cool/beautiful/powerful). And then the methodologies for assessing the effectiveness of those campaigns are just lifted from the West without much thought to the notion that Asians have a different perception of the truth or how to articulate it. Even the focus group dynamic is completely stuffed given that cultural differences like Guanxi in China or Grenjai in Thailand exist. This is where even the sharing of inconsequential information is considered reckless and stupid. I did write back here how I would approach Asian research with a fresh mindset because the same old companies come back with the same old rubbish and its not hard to figure out better ways.

I've pointed out that a lot of the advertising people in China have sat on top of 15% GDP growth for 10-15 years and are at best unremarkable and at worst believe their own P.R. but I'm guessing that one or two might read the above and see the seeds of China 2.0 in there. It's all very exciting when I think about it - The End.

Update: I see that some of these ideas have started to materialize over on CWR blog.

Does my RSS look big in this?

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