Circular Motion

By Scott Hume, Managing Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 6/1/2003

Everything changes. Nothing changes.

In 1996, Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s Corp. promoted Jack Greenberg from vice chairman and chief financial officer to chairman of McDonald’s USA. With domestic sales growth slowing, Greenberg (who in 1999 would become the company’s chairman and CEO) made changes in the chain’s marketing efforts. Advertising agency assignments were shuffled and the “My McDonald’s” slogan was dumped.

Now, seven years later, McDonald’s domestic sales picture is even gloomier. Greenberg retired last year and was succeeded as chairman and CEO by Jim Cantalupo, and the chain is challenging its ad agencies to come up with a slogan a little more exciting than its current theme line, “Smile.”

The company seems hellbent on remaking the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” only with Ronald McDonald in the Bill Murray role as a man who continually relives the same day.

What is even eerier, however, is that another company is working from the same script. Miami-based Burger King Corp. is under new ownership (by a group composed of Texas Pacific Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Bain Capital) and recently named as CEO Brad Blum, previously a vice chairman at Darden Restaurants in Orlando, Fla.

Burger King’s domestic sales have been declining for some time so Blum is making marketing changes just as Mikel Durham did when she took over as president of Burger King North America in 2000. A new advertising agency recently was hired (the chain’s third in little more than a year) and given the mandate to create a slogan a little catchier and a lot more comprehensible than the last effort: “@BK You Got It.” Consumers apparently didn’t get it. McDonald’s and Burger King share a seemingly unshakeable, all-American faith in the power of marketing, even after successive campaigns have failed to ignite sales for either chain.

If Burger King’s marketing hasn’t improved sales, however, it hasn’t been for a want of effort. Since January 2002, the chain has augmented its menu with the King Supreme, BK Homestyle Griller, BK Smokehouse Cheddar Griller, Black Stack BBQ Griller, Grilled Sourdough and Homer Simpson X-Treme Bacon & Cheese Whopper burgers, along with the Eggwich Muffin breakfast sandwich, Chicken Whopper and Chicken Caesar Salad. It has tried the 99-cent BK Value Menu and a money-back guarantee on its Whopper and Chicken Whopper.

In addition to Homer Simpson, BK has trotted out such celebrity endorsers as blues legend B.B. King, basketball stars Shaquille O’Neal and the Harlem Globetrotters and comedian Steve Harvey. Its tie-in promotions spanned television’s “Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius” to Hollywood’s “Men in Black II.” Burger King hasn’t just changed ad agencies, it has worn them out, used them up and moved on to the next. And its sales still aren’t improving.

Here’s hoping BK’s latest agency is well rested or that it has the courage to suggest that more or better marketing may not always be the answer to a chain’s most serious problems.