With more and more ways to advertise your brand each year, exposure seems to be growing at a rapid rate, but unfortunately clutter is as well. Walk through somewhere like Times Square and you immediately become overwhelmed by the amount of brands that have flashy signs and LCD displays. Your brand gets lost and overlooked very easily.
So how does a company cut through all this clutter and present their brand in a way that engages its viewers and engrains their brand into the mind of the consumer? Take a look at what McDonald’s is doing at Piccadilly, London (the UK equivalent of Times Square).
McDonald’s said the reason why they created this interactive sign was to “give something back to the 34 million people who pass it every year.” And that’s exactly what they did. By allowing a passerby to take pictures of their friends and loved ones interacting with the sign, it’s creating a memorable and fun experience that has the golden arches logo conveniently placed in the bottom of the picture. It’s not overly-aggressive. It doesn’t come at you with a message. It simply invites people to play and have fun.
Perhaps the best part of this interactive tactic is the fact that photographers will soon after be posting their funny pictures all over their facebook, twitter, flickr, and youtube accounts. This ends up being free exposure for McDonald’s. Better yet, it’s positive exposure that it is being generated by ordinary people, rather than the usual exposure coming directly from the company, which can often result in a lack of credibility.
So McDonald’s seems to be doing a great job at creating happy feelings through their advertisements, but I’m still confused….Why do I feel like I’m about to go into a coma each time I finish eating there?
-Chris