The arches have been part of the restaurants design since it first opened, and the current arches that form a "M" have been part of the logo since 1968. When it comes to advertising and branding yourself, Mcdonald's obviously struck gold with the arches(yes, the pun was intended), and are still used today. However, as the rest of the world evolves, so must logos, brands and advertising techniques, but somethings never change. I will be dissecting these next three advertisements from newer McDonald's campaigns, using semiotics...you can bet on one thing right now though, that you can find those Golden Arches on them somewhere...
Well, to me, it's obvious that McDonald's is trying to play off the ideology of healthy eating and "real food". As someone who currently makes a living off the health and fitness industry, I am happy to announce that people in this country are finally starting to care about food rather than calories. People are starting to become aware of all processed food pumped full of chemicals and ingredients that we can barely pronounce. We realize that we need to eat real food, that either walks on the Earth or grows from Earth. People are wanting simple. McDonald's uses this to their advantage, by showing their fries being carved out of a simple, plain, raw, white potato. What's more simple than that? Then, just to really hit the nail in the coffin, they put the words "real good" on the bottom, providing us with two meanings. 1) Their fries are really good. 2) "Real" food is good, and our fries are made from real food.
The next ad is an outdoor ad in the form of a billboard. The denotations that we get from this are, once again, very simple. There is one billboard cut down the middle(vertically) with an add on attachment on the top(connecting both), each section containing 1/3 of a "Big Mac" along with some text on both billboards. With this simplicity, McDonald's is able to tell us so much...and size is the main thing. First of all, the text on the left just says "big mac" which is the name of the burger being displayed here, so automatically, the word "big" is instilled into our brains. Then by splitting the board, they make the board itself seem larger, which means when they place the burger on it, it too will seem larger. They take it a step further though and make the burger so LARGE, that not only does it not fit on one board, but it doesn't fit on both boards and is overflowing out of the top of both billboards. They are really pushing the idea, and playing off the consumer behavior of, "BIGGER IS BETTER!"
The third and final ad, is again from McDonald's but this time it's a television commercial. Once again, the fast food giant likes to keep it simple. The whole ad is shot in one scene of a group of younger, fit people sitting in a meditative pose(practicing yoga) on a green lawn in what looks like a public park. The people are shown practicing meditative deep breaths and hums every so often, as birds chirp and a lady passes on her bike. There's a man on a bench reading a newspaper, who seems to be adjusting himself and paper every time the group takes their deep breaths. The scene eventually pulls back and reveals an advertisement for McDonald's "chicken mcnuggets" on the back page. At the end we see the golden arches with a green background.
McDonald's is once again going back to people's every evolving interest in health and the environment. By showing happy, healthy people exercising they automatically get you thinking about being healthy, in end connecting McDonald's with being healthy. This idea is really reinforced once we find out that the people were not actually practicing the "yoga deep breath" but rather doing a "hunger hum" every time they saw a little more and more of that chicken nugget revealed. You know that hum, "HMMMM, that looks good, I want that...HMMMMMM." The fact that they are outside on a beautiful day, with birds chirping on green grass makes us feel good about the environment. Makes us believe that McDonald's does care about the environment. As the ad ends, we see the arches but this time with a green background, once again really pushing the idea of environmentalism into your head(it may have even been an Earth Day ad).
"A picture is worth a thousand words" and judging from these past three advertisements, no one knows that better than McDonald's.
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