12371: Mickey D’s McTime Warp.

Businessweek pointed out the 2015 Mickey D’s brand transformation looks like the 1990s Mickey D’s brand transformation. Well, the fast feeder is still co-conspiring with the same White advertising agency—Leo Burnett—so it’s not surprising that things appear to be thoroughly unoriginal. In fact, by sticking with Burnett, McDonald’s can expect its marketing woes to continue for at least another 66 years.

McDonald’s New Turnaround Plan Is So 1990s

By Venessa Wong

In a period of lasting difficulty for McDonald’s, with U.S. same-store sales dropping over consecutive quarters, executives turn to regionalized menus, made-to-order burgers, and speed to bring the world’s largest burger chain out of a multi-quarter slump. Sound familiar? It’s almost an exact match for McDonald’s modern-day woes and current turnaround strategy. But all of the details above come from a 1997 interview with a McDonald’s executive about reforms at the chain.

Not much has changed in 17 and a half years. Even the language used by McDonald’s executives has uncanny echoes across the decades. McDonald’s “needs to operate with more speed, agility and decisiveness,” wrote then-Vice Chairman Jack Greenberg in a 1997 memo leading up to decentralized decision-making by five divisional presidents. Here’s how Michael Dean Andres, McDonald’s new U.S. president, explained the current revival plan to investors last month: “We have to be more nimble, we have to be faster, faster to market with new ideas, and more responsive to competitive threat.” Andres added: “[W]e’ve moved from the former division structure into a different model focused on empowering and supporting our regions.”

Back in 1997, McDonald’s was working to escape six quarters of negative same-store sales in the U.S. The chain finds itself in familiar territory today: Domestic same-store sales haven’t been positive since October 2013 and posted a 4.6 percent drop in November, the biggest one-month decline in more than a decade. McDonald’s announced a plan in October to draw four zones—Northeast, South, Central, and West—from the three existing regions that shape its operations. This will affect both the menu and how advertising is distributed. The changes, Andres said, will enable the chain “to be more sophisticated” in addressing diverse consumer needs across the country.

But McDonald’s already has a long history of regional organization. “I don’t think the weakness in sales or problems recently have anything to do with their divisional or zone arrangements,” says Dick Adams, owner of the McDonald’s franchisee consultancy Franchise Equity Group and a former franchise director for McDonald’s Western USA. He says over the decades McDonald’s has gone from three zones (East, West, and Central) to five divisions, back to three divisions, and now the change to four zones.

The virtue of regional menu options is they don’t force restaurants to offer items that won’t succeed in their markets. The McRib, for instance, only returned in some restaurants last year because “some areas of the country have more interest in pork than others,” as spokeswoman Lisa McComb told Bloomberg Businessweek in October. Other items are launched based on local cuisine, such as haupia pie in Hawaii.

The problem with this approach is that regional menus “are very hard for national chains to execute,” says Darren Tristano, executive vice president of food industry consultancy Technomic. “It would appear that 17 years later, McDonald’s still faces the challenge and has not found a way to meet these regional demands.”

McDonald’s isn’t merely rehashing regional strategies. Another issue it has discussed at length recently is evolving with changing consumer tastes without compromising speed. Back in 1998, the head of McDonald’s Western region told the Los Angeles Times about an effort to test a “Made for You” production system in which orders would be prepared for each customer, rather than having items precooked and kept warm until ordered. McDonald’s is now taking the late-1990s innovation (the system is still in place today) further with its 2015 test of the “Create Your Taste” program, which will soon roll out to 2,000 stores. The latest attempt at customization doesn’t only prepare-to-order but also allows consumers to choose the cheeses, toppings, and condiments on their burgers.

It’s a system, Adams says, that is bound to slow up kitchens. “I don’t think they know what they want to be,” the franchise consultant warned. He added: “There’s really nothing new here.”

Asked if McDonald’s is revisiting old strategies, spokeswoman Terri Hickey said in an e-mail: “It’s difficult to compare strategies from 17 years ago to today with the exception of our goal of always listening to our customers and evolving to their changing tastes.” While the chain has offered regional products for years, Hickey says, McDonald’s franchisees can now draw from its global menu pipeline.

Last week, meanwhile, McDonald’s announced a “brand transformation” that would include new advertising by ad agency Leo Burnett, and new uniforms, packaging, and signage. The slogan “I’m lovin’ it” is an old standby that dates back more than a decade.

11465: Reviewing The Crazy Ones.

It’s odd that no trade publications or blogs have commented on CBS series The Crazy Ones, a comedy show set in a fictional Chicago advertising agency. After all, AMC series Mad Men routinely inspires columns and posts—and even AMC series The Pitch draws occasional press. The Businessweek review below indicates The Crazy Ones may rival short-lived TNT series Trust Me with its awfulness.

Review: Robin Williams in The Crazy Ones

By Jessica Grose

In the new CBS sitcom The Crazy Ones, Robin Williams stars as Simon Roberts, the temperamental head of a Chicago advertising agency called Roberts + Roberts, which he co-owns with his uptight daughter, Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar). He’s unorthodox and difficult: Roberts pulls Scottish accents at inopportune moments and boxes with a giant toy robot in his office. (So basically, he’s Robin Williams.) We’re meant to believe he’s a genius, because he explains to a roomful of McDonald’s executives in the pilot that his pitch is not about burgers and fries, but about the notion that “family is everything.”

Have you heard this somewhere before? The brilliant but mercurial creative director, the strained familial relationships, the man who is the beating heart at the center of mucky commerce? Oh, right, it’s Don Draper from Mad Men. (The two shows even share an actor, James Wolk, who plays the squirrelly Bob Benson on Mad Men and the slutty Zach Cropper on Crazy Ones.) And though the series are fairly different—Crazy Ones, a half-hour comedy, is terrible—both embrace the stock character of the stormy yet special creative.

The figure of the adman as volatile magician arose in the 1950s and ’60s, according to Cynthia Meyers, an associate professor at the College of Mount Saint Vincent and the author of the forthcoming book A Word From Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio. In the early part of the 20th century, Meyers says, ad concepts were dictated by account executives. Illustrators and copywriters just worked for them. Back then, the “hard sell” was the main strategy. A burger ad would focus on concrete qualities such as how fresh the beef is.

Starting in the early ’60s, the “soft sell”—ads appealing to the client’s and consumer’s associations and emotions—began to dominate, and the designers and writers became much more heralded. Along with them came “a romantic terminology about the creative process,” Meyers says. Ads shifted from being about a burger’s juiciness to narratives about how burger grill marks remind you of your father’s love. TV writers in particular, Meyers speculates, like writing about advertising because they see television as experiencing the same central conflict between art and commerce. (Thirtysomething, which featured a married couple who ran an ad agency, memorably explored this theme in the ’80s.)

Mad Men works because showrunner Matthew Weiner is also a master of the soft sell. When Don Draper is pitching Kodak an ad for its Carousel slide projector, he evokes a deep sense of nostalgia, which means “the pain from an old wound” in Greek, he tells the executives. He shows photographs of his perfect young children and beautiful wife in years past and transports his clients—and viewers—to wistful memories.

Crazy Ones isn’t going for the same emotional chords that Mad Men hits so effortlessly. Williams does his thing, inhabiting characters—Mike Tyson and an American Indian from an old western—and the others are just satellites around his manic energy. It’s a shame, because Hamish Linklater, who plays the agency’s art director, and Gellar are both talented actors. All this mugging might have worked for Williams 20 years ago, but here it feels outdated and irritating.

There’s definitely a space in the TV universe for a lightly comedic Mad Men. Most of us work in offices in which to some degree we sublimate our true selves, so it’s a pleasure to live vicariously through characters who not only buck authority but also wrestle with issues of authenticity. But when Simon Roberts shows a clip from a 1972 McDonald’s ad depicting a father and son playing together, and says to the McDonald’s executives, “I was flat broke, but I still had enough money to buy her a Happy Meal. Made me look like a king to her,” it feels glib. Both Mad Men and Crazy Ones are trying to sell the audience on their product. With Crazy Ones, no one’s buying.

10147: Businessweek On The Pitch.

Businessweek published a thoughtful review of AMC series The Pitch. The accompanying illustration above perfectly complements the critique.