Working at Leo Burnett in the late 80s, the most coveted
assignments were the “reputation” spots for McDonalds. These were some of the
most memorable spots McDonalds has ever done, because they put McDonalds into
people’s lives and didn’t try to cram cheeseburgers down their throats.
Roy Berghold, the one man responsible for all the McDonalds
advertising during that period tells the story of the power of the Idea.
For years McDonalds had done reputation spots like Olympic
Hopefuls about the little kids and their Olympic aspirations and the classic
Country Hero spot where the kid loses the big race but is greeted at the train
station by the whole town when he returns.
Burger King tried to do their own reputation spot and
actually did a really nice job at it. They entered it into a national award
show and won a big award. But what happened next proved the power of the Idea.
The person in charge of the award show called up McDonalds
and told them they had won a prize for their spot. They went back and looked it
up and they had to admit Leo Burnett didn’t enter a spot of that title.
It was the Burger King spot created by their agency. But the
Idea of a reputation spot was so firmly McDonalds that even when BK did it well,
the credit still went to the Golden Arches.
The Idea can make excuses for bad service, can create new
markets and can even make your competitor’s work sell your product.
Similar situation with American Tourister luggage--they had that great "gorilla" commercial in the 70s, then rarely did any advertising after that. Samsonite, the market leader in the luggage category, did a ton of advertising through the 80s and 90s. But time after time, people would tell Samsonite executives, "Boy, we really liked that gorilla commercial of yours way back when."
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