You are welcome to share your thoughts on this article written by Chris Hart, Creative Director at Blue Marlin, Bath.
Did you know that Coca-Cola or a Coke-owned drink is the market leading soft drink in every country in the world except one?
McDonald’s
The time of great changes has come for McDonald’s. Despite of the +$1 billion overhaul that the company plans to complete by 2015 to ultimately change the face of its restoraunts, the brand is under pressure to discard its other iconic face, Ronald McDonald.
The campaign against McDonald’s symbol and point of communication with young consumers is gaining momentum as a group of activist physicians and health conscious people are pursuading McDonald’s to give a boot to its 43-year-old mascot.
Following Burger King and other food service industry rivals, McDonald’s is getting a makeover for the first time in its 56-year history with the aim to get a contemporary look and lure in customers of more age categories, USAToday reports. The results of McMakeover can already be seen in several brand’s locations in Tampa, Florida. However, this is just a small piece of $1 billion-plus plan McDonald’s has in mind as it intends to renovate 14,000 restaurants across the United States by 2015.
McDonalds has launched a multiplatform marketing campaign in China entitled ‘ChickiLeaks’, adage.com reports. This initiative is held by the restoraunt chain in collaboration with Chinese video hosting service Tudou and is running on TV as well as the Internet at the campaign’s microsite and a variety of online videos posted at the mentioned video hosting hub.
The story of close relationship between brands and cinematography started nearly at the same time as the cinema itself was born—in the beginning of the movie era, the big companies promoted their products though short clips which were screened before movies. Now it’s not that easy to tell for sure for which product the pioneer ad was created, but according to a range of sources (IMDB is one of them), the first filmed advertising for a today’s global brand was shot for Dewar’s Scotch Whisky (1897). Today, connections between filmmaking industry and brands go beyond this simple presence and include a lot of examples such as much discussed product placement, festival sponsorship and opening cinema clubs, cinema-related advertising campaigns, collaboration with filmmakers on commercials, and creating movies under brands’ supervision.