Social Media Marketing: McDonald's and the Power of Brand Recognition

About a month ago, a new marketing campaign came out featuring Mindy Kaling. The campaign consists of a series of YouTube videos in which Kaling talks about Coca Cola--more specifically how people say there is this one place where Coke happens to taste so good.

The second she said it, I knew what that place was. But if you didn't already know, Kaling tells you to go and Google it. "I'll wait," she says. And if you Google, "that place where Coke tastes so good," you'll find a wealth of articles on why it is that Coke tastes extra good at McDonald's.

I think this ad campaign will serve as a blueprint for social media marketing going forward. It's brilliant in a couple of ways. First, the ad campaign never once names McDonald's. It doesn't need to, because McDonald's already knows how recognizable their brand is. As soon as Kaling says, "the place where Coke tastes so good," I think of McDonald's because a lifetime of ads and branding have created a permanent link between McDonald's and Coca Cola in my head. Even better, Kaling wears a yellow dress in the videos, standing against a red background. Again, most of us have already come to associate the red-and-yellow color combo with McDonald's, so visually, this ad has us primed.

But the videos have another brilliant quality: they're in on the joke. They know the power of their brand recognition, and they're sort of poking fun at it. They know they don't have to say the word McDonald's. They know viewers will Google the phrase when Kaling tells them to, and they know that as soon as viewers Google it, they'll realize it's all a marketing campaign. It's simultaneously subtle and in your face, in a way that's humorous, right down to Kaling's smirk and head tilt. 

In this campaign, McDonald's illustrates how to build on previous branding with new marketing. And the act of Kaling telling viewers to go Google something is a bit unusual as well, but it's a practice I imagine we'll start to see more and more. Advertising campaigns used to have to disguise themselves, slipping into the pages of our newspapers or the breaks between our TV shows, catching our attention before we could realize we were getting played. But advertising is so omnipresent now--it's harder to disguise. So marketing campaigns will have to get more creative, and McDonald's seems to be leading the charge.