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•Five Greatest Brands Ever 95

It guards its brands tightly and is a wonderful example of the huge power of
building brands on values and managing them well.

Idea 53 – McDonald’s

Their managers sum up McDonald’s as ‘not just a product, it’s an experience.’
Surely the proof of the greatness of the brand is that it was amongst the first compa-
nies to expand quickly into Eastern Europe after the Berlin wall came down.

The brand means America, and an enjoyable lifestyle. Thus the brand has been
built on cultural connection as well as commercial astuteness. It is a deceptively
simple and universal formula – limited choice, quick service and clean restaurants.
In short ‘Do the simple things well.’

If the incursion into former communist countries is the big picture, then the
narrower context of the explosion that is McDonald’s is product and design consist-
ency. With few exceptions – you can have a glass of wine with your burger in Paris,
and the restaurant opposite Windsor Castle melds into its surroundings more than
most – you do not know where you are in the world when you are in a McDonald’s.

McDonald’s does not have the branding completely solved. It is a highly central-
ised operation and it admits that it takes too long to get new ideas into the field. Both of
these are difficult nuts to crack. The first requires a new way of motivating and empow-
ering people, and the latter a faster cycle of listening to the customer and reacting.

Still, theirs is a big, global market. As McDonald’s publicity bemoans, ‘On any
day, even as the market leader, McDonald’s serves less than one per cent of the
world’s population.’

Come the start of the 21st century, McDonald’s, though still a great brand, is
showing its first signs of mortality. A huge price war with its competitors, and possi-
bly the result of its difficulties in bringing forward new ‘experiences’ has raised ques-
tions about its future. Maybe McDonald’s will end up as the greatest brand of all
time for the shortest possible time.