A few months ago, Mac Donald’s launched a new TV campaign in France ‘come as you are’. The campaign itself, created by EuroRSCG, is pretty nice but what really caught my attention was the logo: it has turned green!! Just like that, without a warning or at least a press release. French restaurants will shortly be painted in green too.
MacDonald’s and France always had a strong love/hate relationship. Synonymous of obesity, bad health, bad working conditions, the fast-food giant struggled to seduce consumers in a country that takes food seriously: it has to be both slowly made and slowly enjoyed. We made up the words ‘MalBouffe’ or ‘bad grub’ to describe their so-called food and ‘MacJob’ to describe a low-paid, unrewarding, rubbish job. One restaurant in Paris was on strike for a year, another one was dismantled by farmers and anti-globalization activists, and so on.
But today, you can get a BigMac on a 6 cereals traditional French bun, and a ‘green’ restaurant opened in Paris a year ago. Following this example a new pilot ‘green’ McDonald’s is scheduled to open its doors on July 14 in North Carolina, built with sustainable materials and integrating eco-friendly technology as well as electric vehicle charging parking spots.
It seems to be a very successful strategy: surprisingly France is now their world’s fastest growing market.
So a green logo to convince everybody that you are now sustainable and healthy? that’s a bit cliché design-wise. But hey, this is McDonald’s… That’s good news if they are moving in the right direction.