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 Some suggest that the era we live in with televisions and Elmo-on-demand has made clowns outdated as an entertainment source.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?

Starbucks’ Press Release Marketing

As I’m sure you’ve already heard, Starbucks is closing its doors this evening to retrain employees. It’s important that Starbucks makes this move since sales have been sluggish for the company recently. Remember that when your product is more than the next guy’s you must offer something the other guy doesn’t. Certainly some people prefer Starbucks’ coffee to Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds Premium, or Burger King’s Joe coffee, but just because they prefer the taste doesn’t mean they’re willing to pony up the extra dough. As they say, “quality, speed, price: choose two.”

With Starbucks some people would say you lose on price. Other people would say you lose on speed, since you can get your coffee much faster from a McDonalds than a Starbucks. And certainly some would say you lose on both of those; they would be the ones who go somewhere else.

Starbucks takes a lot of lumps being a giant in its industry. It’s been widely joked that Starbucks is everywhere—even on Mars once photos from the Mars rover were sent back to JPL. Starbucks is making a big statement by closing every store and retraining the employees. Granted, they do most of their business in the morning, but they are admitting to having a problem. More importantly, they’re saying that they will fix the problem.

Is this step enough to help Starbucks see better numbers? Do you think this is a move you’d ever see out others who are tops in their category (McDonalds, Walmart, GM, etc.)? It appears to me that better than a promotion or a campaign, this is still results in word of mouth and news coverage, but shows that Starbucks is willing to be unconventional to improve its customer’s experience. This story has been covered on the news and around the ‘net, so it’s clearly a case of press releases or other business news becoming marketing. The question is merely how effective this particular effort will be. What are your thoughts?

Search Questions

On occasion, I get a visitor to Marketer Synergy that comes through a search engine with a question. Yesterday I had someone ask,

“What time does Chick-fil-a stop serving breakfast?”

I probably can’t help that searcher any more, but I’m sure someone else wants to know so I’m providing the answer:

Chick-fil-a stops serving breakfast at 10:30.

In my experience the following is also true:
McDonald’s stops serving breakfast at 10:30.
Burger King stops serving breakfast at 10:30.
Subway stops serving breakfast at 10:30.
Dunkin’ Donuts never stops serving breakfast.

I’ve never tried White Castle (Krystal) or Carl’s Jr (Hardees) breakfast. If anyone knows when they stop serving breakfast, please feel free to comment.