The
biggest problem with McDonald's is that they are just so omnipresent. They are going to have a stake in everything,
everywhere, always. I don’t think I have
a problem with them sponsoring so many things, because I don’t inherently
support McDonald’s when I, say, watch a World Cup soccer game, but rather just
get more exposed to the restaurant chain than I would like to. One of the biggest problems with this country
being so money-driven and class-conscious is that people think having very
little money is an excuse to have very little class. The times I have gone to any kind of Mickey
D’s in the past two years or so are those times when I am on the road with my
family and they’re buying. As they
pointed out at the end of our Wyoming trip last year- ‘We can’t always afford to spend a lot of money on
dinner.’ So I suppose I should be
thankful that I live in a country that allows cheap meals sometimes. But when you make a place like McDonalds part
of your regular lifestyle, you miss out on so much joy in life that isn’t just
out of reach because you, say, can’t afford a sit-down restaurant, or have very
little time. It’s just SO easy to go
grocery shopping and have some frozen pizzas and just try your best to have a
sit-down meal. Your kids need to be able
to feed themselves, they need to feel
like they’re part of a family and that they’re a self-sufficient breed, and
they need to be getting proper
nutrients. No matter what you get at
McDonalds, it’s just not going to be as good for you as something you make for
yourself.
All of these consequences build on
themselves, and this is to me why McDonalds is so evil. They’ve just insinuated themselves into the
lives of a certain class of people to such a large extent, that a lot of people
think of it as just a way of life. Like,
this is where
normal people eat on a
regular basis- which is sad, because McD’s has a very effective method of
making it seem that way, and the more it starts to seem that way, the more it
becomes true. Their slogan now, which
they haven’t changed in a decade and probably won’t ever again
[i]
is “I’m lovin’ it!” What is “it”? It is everything you can possibly imagine,
because this place is everywhere and everything. You can’t escape it. First of all: support Mom and Pop shops as
much as you possibly can.
[ii] Secondly: Fix your own meals as much as you
possibly can. Because while the Krocs
have done a very good job of making you think that you should only eat stuff
that’s familiar to you, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. One of their most recent commercials is some
guy who just became a rich pro athlete- but hey, he stays true to his roots by
buying all his friends McDonald’s. I’m
glad we’re not friends, because I would be telling him to take us out for
something good, like sushi. Like good
sushi. When I go to a store, I’m
suspicious of things that are too inexpensive.
I would rather pay more for a superior product which I don’t have to
replace or otherwise regret getting sooner than I’d like.
However, there are some soccer
sponsors I do respect, and one of the reasons I respect this one so much is in
large part due to their commercials.
There are several really good Heineken commercials, but I think one of my
favorites has to be
the one with the guy chasing down some chick who left her
business card case in the cab. (Be warned, the version of this that appears on TV is much shorter.) He goes to a place called The Chop and gets a shave. He later goes to a place called Step Sisters. He learns to swing dance. Then he ends up at a jazz joint called the
Broken Note. Here he buys the piano man
a Heinie and plays a few notes on the piano.
Then he’s quickly out of cards and hasn’t found the lady, whose name is
apparently Eve. Eve is both a great name
for an attractive chick, because it is the name of the first woman, but it’s
also quite possibly just the name (a
great name) of an upper level restaurant which he soon
finds from a giant neon sign. He gives
the red-haired hostess the case, as if to ask who he can give it back to, and
she leads him to some kind of private urban gondola where they share a couple
cold ones. What’s great about this
particular Heinie commercial to start with, is that each of these places just
has such a perfect name. And while other
commercials for Heineken have featured men with a lot of talent wooing ladies,
they’ve mostly been dudes who are offensively over-confident in whatever
environment they enter. This is one with
a guy who, while obviously not shy, definitely doesn’t know what to expect from
any part of this adventure, but he’s able to roll with anything. Especially a hot redhead
[iii]. The other great part is that while some of
the other commercials take place on a cruise or somewhere foreign, even though
the main character is most likely American, this ad made the correct choice of
setting with a large (American-looking) city, probably NYC. Thus we don’t have the subliminal message
that you need to be rich to be as suave as the guys in the commercial. You just need to drink Heinie and have some
class.
When I was growing up, my dad had a
Chevy S10 with a flatbed in which he would transport us around the neighborhood
in the spring and summer. It was black,
had a small cab, a stick shift and he later sold it for about $2000. But Chevys from there on were always
synonymous with trucks for me- the machines of Men, which separated us from the
Canadians and the French. When I was
trying to even out the themes in T-shirts I owned, I found one with a Chevy
logo at Target and it became one of the only tops I own that doesn’t honor some
sports team. But I do feel like Chevy is
a team in its own right. It was the car
answer to the Coke-Pepsi rivalry
[iv]. I was on team Chevy.
And Chevy has done a lot of things
right to close that gap, especially in the truck department. They always had the better slogan for their
trucks- Like a Rock. It even had its own
song: “I was strong as I could be…” The Chevy logo is simple and classic as
well. It’s one shape, and while the
outline of the shape is essentially 12 segments or so, they do a really good
job of emphasizing that it’s pretty much just two really thick lines that cross
each other. You can see on the grill of
most of their vehicles, that the long, horizontal line sits on the
distinguishing middle bar, with the thicker, vertical line hangs out
un-assumingly in the middle, only slightly dangling off either side. (This simplicity of design was something Ford
still hasn’t nailed down.) And the name
Chevy has itself a very American appeal, given that the full name, Chevrolet,
is obviously French in origin. You both
ignore that root and honor the forebears who shortened it in this country.
Lately Chevy has been very much
trying to emphasize its place in Americana, and is in my opinion
succeeding. Their campaign in the middle
of the last decade was “An American Revolution”. They introduced a bunch of new cars, and
brought back many of the old ones.
Everyone loves and knows the Camaro and the Corvette. But the Impala has a place in the urban
landscape of this country and the Suburban was the first major vehicle for
people who had a lot of stuff and/or people to carry around, but didn’t want to
drive a creepy van. And I don’t care
what people say, the El Camino might be the best vehicle ever, and the granddaddy
of all
coupe utilities. But while not
all the new vehicles have stuck, I think those who own the Equinox love the
name of the vehicle at the very least.
There may not be much of a point to the SSR, either, but let’s be
honest- it’s pretty sweet that
it exists.
I think they’ve done a great job of solidifying their identity- as a
company that takes risks, but knows what it’s done right.
The fact is that I haven’t been a
huge Ford backer historically and they haven’t done a lot in this area lately
to make that change. They do just tend
to rest on their laurels a little bit. But
there are a few things they’ve had working against them in the past few
years. For one, they can’t help that a
lot of Canadians wanted the Ranger, inherently reducing its appeal in
America. And they definitely got hit by
the brunt of the recession. The new
image they are trying to create is doing really well for them. They are fully embracing the eco-revolution
and from everything I’ve heard the Fiesta and Focus are really fun to
drive. The main thing that has gotten my
attention is their new grill, which I think is more of a representative for
your company than people tend to give credit to. We’ve known for a long time that you want
generally to stick with one style across all of your vehicles, but the main
conundrum was how to make yours unique compared to every other car
company. Could I look at your car or
truck and say “Oh, that’s a
______”? Ford has succeeded with their new-style grills
which look equally appropriate on any type of vehicle
[v]
and are especially identifiable, more so even than Chevy lately.
But what they haven’t been able to
do is get a logo that you only have to see part of, the way you do with Chevy,
Coke or McDonald’s. The Ford logo has
been the same for a long time, but now that a lot of auto manufacturers are
using ellipses for their main logo, it has become so much less unique, despite
its trademarked status. What they
probably should do is make a close-up of part of the Ford script within the
enclosure. Something with white-on-blue,
ala the Coke tail, which they’ve leveraged so deftly. The only thing I can think of they may have
that people think of them in even the top 5 for is the color blue.
[i]
Until the sh*t hits the fan and it becomes something like “It wasn’t
just us!”
[ii]
I’m glad we live in the age of Yelp!, we have a means of telling what places of
those we’ve never heard of are actually good.
[iii]
“Fine! We’ll go somewhere private and have sex! Settle down!”
[iv]
Which really isn’t one anymore.
[v]
Even on the embarrassingly wide array of cars that are going by the moniker “Crossover”
these days. Can we just admit that some
of them are essentially Station Wagons?
