The Demand For New Marketing Strategies
Payton Costenbader
Stillman News Writer
As more products enter the market and current companies grow old, new marketing strategies are detrimental to keeping businesses alive. In today’s age there is space in social media for millions of different types of content, which leads to redundancies in marketing strategies. As much as brands want to be different and stick out from their competitors, they are often stuck promoting very similarly to play defense to the market’s advertisements.
For example, when Wendy’s popularized their 4 for 4 menu deal, which included a choice of entrée along with a value sized fry, a value sized drink and a four-piece nugget, Burger King brought back their 5 for 4 meals to compete with this. Burger King included the very same items as well as a cookie for dessert. This was not a moment of unique marketing that showed they provided something new for customers, it was simply an act of defense to not lose customers to Wendy’s low prices.
For established companies to keep business exciting they must branch out into new ideas and collaborations or risk losing the public’s interest. McDonald’s has been dominating the game of exciting marketing through collaborations for years. McDonald’s has created limited time menu options that are advertised with a celebrity’s name attached. This is so that customers can order the same meal their favorite artist would purchase from the franchise, collect limited time packaging from these deals, or try special edition menu items and sauces that are only available during the time of the promotion. McDonald’s has partnered with many celebrities and bands such as BTS, Travis Scott, Saweetie, Mariah Carey, Micheal Jordan, Cardi B and Offset. These collaborations have done tremendously well as the BTS meal alone increased sales by 41% during the time of the promotion.
While McDonald’s has been dominating by using these celebrity collaborations to boost media chatter and publicity, they have also been branching out beyond food. November of this current year, 2023, McDonald’s has debuted their collaboration with Croc. Croc is a popular brand of shoe that specializes in rubbery, waterproof clogs that are great for multipurpose wear. These shoes have grown in popularity in the past few years with many different styles and patterns to choose from. The newest collaboration with McDonald’s features character themed clogs based upon the McDonald’s character crew from McDonaldland fantasy world. These characters were used in advertisements prior to 2003 when the McDonaldland promotion method was replaced by the current campaign “I’m lovin’ it.” Though these characters have been retired for the past twenty years, they are still held dearly in the hearts of those who remember. This is clearly shown through the success of the new shoe launch.
For a business that is already so well integrated into their individual markets, it is hard to keep the attention on them rather than the new and exciting companies entering the competition. There is a dire need for consistent attention in order not to lose customers to competitors. While this can be done in Burger King/ Wendy’s fashion by providing new deals and menu upgrades to keep products exciting, McDonald’s has the upper hand relating to new audiences. The use of popular celebrities to advertise catches attention from market pools beyond the regular fast-food consumers, they are now reaching the fanbase of these celebrities as well. In addition, they are inserting their product/ logo into more diverse products to increase the media attention to their brand, such with the Croc x McDonald’s collaboration. These are the innovative marketing tactics that match the demand for excitement and change.
Contact Payton at costenpa@shu.edu