"It's bigger than hiphop!"
—Dead Prez
No marketing scheme can make people fly someplace within driving distance. Same with food. People only eat when they’re hungry. People have a built-in mindset about when, why, and how much they’ll consume. Since you can’t always trick people into being hungry, you have to give them other reasons to eat. Marketers call it “Creating Consumption Opportunities.”
Consumption Opportunities are how you get flatlanders to buy mountain bikes. Consumption Opportunities is how you get people who don’t know a dirt road from a dirty road to buy an SUV even when gas is $3 a gallon. Consumption Opportunities sell disposable contact lenses and bottled water. They sell tanning beds and suntan lotion to minorities and bigoted whites. Consumption Opportunities sell high-priced athletic gear to non-athletes and couch potatoes. Consumption Opportunities sell reruns of marginal TV shows on DVD. Consumption Opportunities can sell a swimming pool to a cat.
Before McDonald’s jumped off in the mid-1960s there was really no such thing as “casual dining.” Average folks ate at home while the notion of eating out as entertainment was reserved for wealthy types, lowlifes, or special occasions. And hamburgers weren’t snacks; they were dinner food. Just ask anyone over 45 or 50—hamburgers were a sit-down, when-you-could-afford-beef dinner food.
Back in the day, most people couldn’t afford to eat beef more than once or twice a week. In fact, livestock, along with whiskey (see The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794) was among the first forms of currency in America. Wealth was often measured by the amount of land and livestock one had. And since most minorities were on the outside looking in, beef was rare. This left pork and chicken (much cheaper meats) more commonplace in minority communities, even to this day.
But times change. The cattle industry figures out how to grow bigger cows and steer. Beef slowly gets cheaper. And along comes the McDonald’s brothers with their hamburgers—no crime there. After all, they weren’t the first or the cheapest, or even the tastiest. But once Ray Kroc got involved, more consumption opportunities were needed in order to grow business, which brings us to:
“I’m Lovin’ It”
Remember Mickey D’s “You deserve a break today”? That line transformed McDonald’s from a restaurant to a stress-relief zone. Burger King’s “Have it your way” was about empowerment as much as it was about food. “Everybody needs a little KFC” was a well-orchestrated spin on TLC (tender loving care). Who doesn’t want a little more of that in their life? “We love to see you smile!” wasn’t about food; it was about feeling good. Who wouldn’t go to a place where everyone wants to make you smile? Isn’t feeling good worth a few extra empty calories a day?
These days, McDonald’s brain-numbing, but effective “I’m lovin’ it” has increased consumption opportunities by playing up an artificial postmodern nostalgia. Everything about it is so pseudo-retro that “I’m lovin’ it” could’ve easily been, “Eat a good memory.” It also creates consumption opportunities by riding the “universalism” movement—homogenizing ever-popular urban imagery and music for mainstream consumption. (Hence their use of Justin Timberlake and their attempt to court emcees to rap about Big Macs in early 2005.)
Consumption Opportunities are how you get flatlanders to buy mountain bikes. Consumption Opportunities is how you get people who don’t know a dirt road from a dirty road to buy an SUV even when gas is $3 a gallon. Consumption Opportunities sell disposable contact lenses and bottled water. They sell tanning beds and suntan lotion to minorities and bigoted whites. Consumption Opportunities sell high-priced athletic gear to non-athletes and couch potatoes. Consumption Opportunities sell reruns of marginal TV shows on DVD. Consumption Opportunities can sell a swimming pool to a cat.
Before McDonald’s jumped off in the mid-1960s there was really no such thing as “casual dining.” Average folks ate at home while the notion of eating out as entertainment was reserved for wealthy types, lowlifes, or special occasions. And hamburgers weren’t snacks; they were dinner food. Just ask anyone over 45 or 50—hamburgers were a sit-down, when-you-could-afford-beef dinner food.
But times change. The cattle industry figures out how to grow bigger cows and steer. Beef slowly gets cheaper. And along comes the McDonald’s brothers with their hamburgers—no crime there. After all, they weren’t the first or the cheapest, or even the tastiest. But once Ray Kroc got involved, more consumption opportunities were needed in order to grow business, which brings us to:
“I’m Lovin’ It”
Remember Mickey D’s “You deserve a break today”? That line transformed McDonald’s from a restaurant to a stress-relief zone. Burger King’s “Have it your way” was about empowerment as much as it was about food. “Everybody needs a little KFC” was a well-orchestrated spin on TLC (tender loving care). Who doesn’t want a little more of that in their life? “We love to see you smile!” wasn’t about food; it was about feeling good. Who wouldn’t go to a place where everyone wants to make you smile? Isn’t feeling good worth a few extra empty calories a day?
These days, McDonald’s brain-numbing, but effective “I’m lovin’ it” has increased consumption opportunities by playing up an artificial postmodern nostalgia. Everything about it is so pseudo-retro that “I’m lovin’ it” could’ve easily been, “Eat a good memory.” It also creates consumption opportunities by riding the “universalism” movement—homogenizing ever-popular urban imagery and music for mainstream consumption. (Hence their use of Justin Timberlake and their attempt to court emcees to rap about Big Macs in early 2005.)
