McDonald's launches sky-high priced takeout boxes, a brand marketing trick?

From the bizarre cross-border phenomenon of big brands, we can find that the brand communication methodology behind them is changing and iterating. The underlying logic of those eye-catching marketing is actually the marketing routines that brands use to cope with the new communication environment. Today, let’s take a look at McDonald’s recent bizarre crossover.

McDonald's has been working hard to attract attention recently.

On September 14, McDonald's launched the 2020 "McDelivery Day" carnival. Giving out 0-yuan coupons is naturally a regular promotional communication action, but the following operation really makes people feel a little weird - McDonald's opened McDelivery takeaway boxes for sale in its Tmall flagship store...

Don't panic, the more exciting thing is that this takeaway box is priced at 1,917 yuan. According to Tmall sales data, six wealthy people bought this McDonald's takeaway box on the same day. They may become the highest-paid deliverymen in the future. The clever Shi Youqu checked the price of the "same model on Taobao" and found it was about 100 yuan. He shed tears of poverty...

Obviously, McDonald's selling takeout boxes is just a marketing gimmick of McDelivery, and this kind of bizarre cross-border business has appeared frequently among catering giants.

At the end of 2019, McDonald's launched a sky-high priced grocery basket bag, claiming that it was limited to 300 units worldwide. This limited edition grocery basket bag was said to be designed in collaboration with designer Alexander Wang and is the same style as Ouyang Nana and Viya. Guess how much it costs? 5888 yuan.

The weird thing is that this sky-high priced vegetable basket bag was sold out within 1 second. I didn’t expect there were so many wealthy people... McDonald’s has also gone further and further in the field of weird cross-border marketing.

Launched along with the vegetable basket bag was a hamburger bag priced at 99 yuan, and the limited edition of 30,000 pieces was quickly sold out.

McDonald's old rival KFC is not to be outdone in its cross-border business. It once launched a pair of fried chicken Crocs with the words "Thank you, I'm disgusted". It was also very considerate to put two pieces of fried chicken props on the Crocs, which was a boon for people who are losing weight.

This pair of hole shoes is priced at 499 yuan, which is a conscience of the industry compared to the outlandish prices of McDonald's peripheral products that cost thousands of yuan.

Of course, KFC is not doing charity. Its expensive peripheral products cannot be worse than McDonald's, otherwise how can it save face? In recent days, KFC has launched a large number of "boundless bucket" packages, priced at 2,890 yuan. Interested rich friends can pay attention to it.

Speaking of expensiveness, we have to mention the meteorite version of spicy chicken burger that KFC once launched, which was priced at 130,000 yuan. It is also known as the treasure of KFC.

The meteorite burger is made of a meteorite that is over 400 years old. It has been polished and carved by three artists. There is only one in the world, but it seems that no one has bought this stone until now...

Let's get back to the topic. Brands like KFC and McDonald's have been continuously launching cross-border products in recent years. In fact, behind this is the change in the entire communication model and communication ideas of the current brand. Let's do a brief analysis.

1. Transformation of Marketing from Hard Advertising to Events

Traditional fast-moving consumer goods brand promotion requires continuous expansion of media resources, especially during summer vacation, which is the peak marketing season for brands such as KFC and McDonald's. However, in the current communication environment, users' time has become fragmented, and the efficiency of hard advertising is actually decreasing. If it fails to arouse discussion, it will be difficult to increase the ROI of the advertising.

Under such circumstances, the brand's marketing ideas are changing. Among mass fast-moving consumer goods nowadays, it is more common to make changes to the product itself, arouse discussion and form a dissemination effect.

Marketing tends to be product-oriented, which has given rise to various cross-border collaborations. Productized marketing can not only stimulate event dissemination, but also allow brands to conduct product testing. Indeed, many brands have found product forms that users like through cross-border collaborations, and even found new growth points for the company's products, selling cross-border products as daily SKUs.

Of course, this does not mean that hard advertising marketing has failed. Hard advertising is still one of the most important means of exposure for consumer brands, but productized marketing methods may become more important in the future.

2. Fully tap the value of brand IP assets

Achieving marketing or business growth through brand-related products is essentially a deep exploration of the brand IP value. When a brand already has a certain influence, marketers can further amplify the marketing power of the brand's vertical categories.

In the final analysis, a brand is a symbol of trust. When users purchase branded products, they are essentially buying a whole set of standardized experiences guaranteed by the brand. This sense of trust can be replicated to other categories, which is why there is a huge price difference between products with logos and those without logos.

Exploring the value of IP will be an important marketing method for future leading brands. We can see that trendy brands have been constantly crossing borders in recent years. In fact, this kind of IP cross-border is also an important way to break the circle of communication.

3. Converting social traffic into e-commerce traffic

To the outside world, McDonald's' bizarre cross-border business is often seen as more form than substance, and more volume than sales. However, what many people overlook is that it is this kind of product-related social communication that can convert huge social traffic into sales, which is also a starting point of brand strategy.

The volume of communication and discussion on social media can attract users to the e-commerce platform, thus completing the conversion of social traffic to e-commerce traffic, which can directly promote the sales of the e-commerce platform. Therefore, it seems that the strange cross-border cooperation is just an event to promote brand communication, but in fact, it can stimulate e-commerce sales in the subsequent user links, and the platform will also give corresponding inclination to the off-site traffic, thus completing the sales closed loop.

From the bizarre cross-border phenomena of various big brands, we can find that the brand communication methodology behind them is changing and iterating. The underlying logic of those eye-catching marketing is actually the marketing routine of brands to cope with the new communication environment.

Author: Interesting

Source: SocialTouch Research Institute (ID: SocialTouch2020)