When Good Corporate Images Go Bad

In what has become something of a classic, The Simpsons’ episode entitled “Lisa’s First Word” (Season 4, Episode 10) features a clown bed that Homer builds for Bart because Lisa needs the crib and Bart loves Krusty the Clown. Unfortunately, Homer’s creation is more Pennywise than Bozo. What follows is Bart spending the night in the creepy clown bed envisioning the evil clown coming to life. The next day we find young Bart in the living room holding himself in the fetal position and repeating, “Can’t sleep; clown’ll eat me.”

It turns out that such a response isn’t all that far from the truth. Scientific research has actually concluded that kids don’t like clowns. Some suggest that the era we live in with televisions and Elmo-on-demand has made clowns outdated as an entertainment source. From my own childhood experience, I didn’t particularly dislike clowns (though I didn’t like them either), but scariest movie was Poltergeist. And it was known around my house as “the clowny movie.” If you don’t remember the scene, I’ve got it for you here.

So what happens when you find out the beloved corporate image you’ve spent years building scares the very people you’re trying to target? If you haven’t paid attention in the past few decades, one of the largest restaurant—and I use that term loosely—chains uses a clown as its mascot. Ronald McDonald is a legend. And yet, he’s a clown. Should McDonalds lose the clown? Should they ignore the masses, including adults, who don’t like clowns? Mickey D’s doesn’t have clown wallpaper and I haven’t seen a new commercial featuring Ronald in a very long time. Has upper management decided to put Ronald in the closet? With locations all across this great country and beyond, does the use of a clown in corporate image hurt McDonalds at all? I’ve got to guess that’s probably not the case. Most people wouldn’t want to find a mouse in their home, but Chuck E. Cheese is also a corporate icon.

Not too many people are afraid of Romans, so Little Cesar is safe. Colonel Sanders and Wendy are people, so no worries there. Chick-fil-a uses a cow and I’m pretty sure in the history of man no one’s been afraid of an unprovoked cow. The King is pretty creepy and I know of people (myself included) that eat at Burger King less or not at all now that BK has decided to use the creepy king to hock its burgers. Subway has Jared, who isn’t even fictional; Arby’s has recently used an oven mitt, which is pretty harmless; White Castle, Hardees, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and plenty of others have no personified animal or object in their current use.

I have no doubts kids will want to go someplace based on the character at the door, but are kids (or adults) avoiding altogether some places based on a creepy character? What’s your personal experience?