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Comparing Between Macdonald's and Burger king's PR




What started with one restaurant in Miami in 1954 has grown to more than 11,500 restaurants in 72 countries worldwide. And, like a small child who eats his greens, we're still growing and growing. If you're interested, we'd love to share our past, our present, and where we're heading in the future with you.

If you've come here looking for franchise and career information, recent news about BURGER KING® or simply just our contact details, it's your lucky day. Take a look...

Type Private Industry Restaurants Predecessor Insta-Burger King Founded Insta-Burger King - July 28, 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida
Current company - January 1955 in Miami, Florida Founder(s) Insta-Burger King - Kieth J. Kramer and Matthew Burns
Current company - David Edgerton and James McLamore Headquarters 5505 Blue Lagoon Drive,
Miami-Dade Co, Florida (near Miami) Area served Global Key people John W. Chidsey (Co-chair)
Alexandre Behring (Co-chair)
Ben K. Wells (CFO)[1] Products Fast Food
(hamburgers • chicken • french fries • soft drinks • milkshakes • salads • desserts • breakfast)
Website burgerking.com




Burger King’s Creative PR Tactic



Last week, people discovered wallets all over cities like Chicago and Orlando. These weren’t typical wallets that people lose and others often find. These wallets were purposely left around cities for people to find and keep.
What’s going on here? Well, this was a creative PR tactic that Burger King put into action. The fast food chain dropped wallets in busy places and told people to keep them. When people opened the wallets, they were pleasantly surprised to find money, Burger King gift cards and other random Burger King items.

I’m not a big fan of fast food, but this is a great PR tactic. By doing something different, people will talk about Burger King. This generates buzz for the company. I’ve found multiple blogs written by people who’ve heard about this tactic or found a wallet themselves. This also shows that Burger King is generous because they give away free things.
Isaacs PR Blog discusses three reasons why this PR tactic worked for Burger King. The first reason is because the tactic was unexpected. People drop wallets all the time, but they don’t usually do it on purpose. You also don’t hear much about companies dropping free items around town, especially without making an announcement. The second reason why this tactic worked was because the timing was perfect. Because of the poor economy, people could use a little help. A $5 Burger King gift card and a few bucks could really benefit someone. Finally, this tactic grabbed the audience’s attention faster than any other tactic. People are more likely to notice this tactic than the usual commercial or billboard.
If I found a wallet, my first instinct would be to return it to the owner. So, if somebody told me to keep it, I’d be pretty excited. I wish I could have found one of these wallets and been a part of Burger King’s PR tactic!



Burger King gets in trouble for its latest marketing mistake




Burger King got in trouble again for their recent "Texican" Whopper Campaign. This would not be the first time that Burger King got in trouble both with the media and had Public Relations nightmare with Mexico.

They were previously in trouble for an ad showing parts of Mexico belonging to the United States. The chile topped burger does sound delicious, and with this much scandal around it, it seems that it will probably do very well - especially for those of us with an aversion to bland food. Twitter is abuzz with this scandal thanks to the front page Yahoo ad.

Burger King’s new public relations stunt: “The Burger” costing about $185.00 (U.S.)





By Your Daily Chum

The world’s most succulent Japanese beef is complemented with white truffles, onion tempura prepared in Cristal champagne and Italy’s finest Pata Negra prosciutto
David Kisilevsky, vice president of marketing at the fast food chain, said: “The Burger is an extension of Burger King’s quality burger menu and is aimed at burger aficionados, looking for the ultimate burger taste experience.
“It reflects our ongoing commitment to producing the best quality burgers for a range of different pockets and reinforces our quality credentials.
Example of Good PR Work: Burger King & Jennifer Hudson
by Chris Brown on Friday, April 13, 2007
Thanks to Brand Sizzle for bringing this great example of positive PR to my attention.
When Jennifer Hudson (Dream Girls) mentioned her job at Burger King in response to a question about why she had not thanked American Idol, her remark was picked up by the media. Burger King turned lemons into PR lemonade.
The original question from Simon Cowell (American Idol) following Jennifer’s acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress from the Oscars for her performance in Dreamgirls:

Jennifer Hudson said American Idol was a ‘stepping stone’ for her. Stepping stone? It was her big opportunity to become noticed and she got noticed and she got Dreamgirls.”"Singers like her deliberately turn against the show that made them successful. The reason (people) come on the show is because all the doors had been slammed in their face.”

In response to the remark made by Simon, Jennifer Hudson said:
“If I’d been any better at my job when I was at Burger King in my middle teens, I wouldn’t be here either, so should I thank them, too?”
And the Burger King spokeperson’s response:
“…In response to Jennifer’s recent comments in which she asked if she should be thanking Burger King, we say thanks, but no thanks are necessary. Burger King Corporation is proud of Jennifer’s success and while we never like to lose employees, in this case, our loss is the entertainment industry’s gain … To further show our support for Jennifer, and make sure she never has to sing for her supper again, Burger King Corporation is giving her a pre-paid BK Crown Card that will be automatically reloaded for life.”
Well done Burger King! A good example of taking a newsy, timely situation and turning it into great PR for one of your marketing programs.


Burger king adds a vegetarian meal

The addition of a vegetarian option to Burger King's sandwich menu last month was greeted with a rousing cheer by a one-time nemesis of the fast-food giant. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which only last year engaged in a heated (and ultimately successful) effort to get the company to hold its meat suppliers accountable to basic animal welfare standards, had high praise for the "BK Veggie." "The new veggie burger is sure to both raise Burger King's revenues and lower Americans' cholesterol levels," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's national campaign coordinator. "[It's] a winning proposition for animals, people and the planet. We hope everyone will give the veggie burger a royal welcome."
Before rolling out the red carpet, it's worth taking a closer look at Burger King's new product. Nutritionally, the BK Veggie has little to recommend it. The patty alone is composed of an astonishing 48 ingredients, including such marvels of modern food science as sodium acid pyrophosphate, hydrolyzed corn gluten and "grill flavor." Combined with its nutritionally deficient, refined-flour bun, the sandwich reflects the ingenuity of its engineers more than it does Burger King's concern for the health of its customers. Granted, the BK Veggie is less a health nightmare the company's familiar fatty, cholesterol-laden burgers. It has about half the sodium of a Whopper and even has a smattering of grains and frozen vegetables. And when served without its mayonnaise topping, it contains no animal products, except for a trace amount of dairy.
But the mere absence of meat and cheese from the BK Veggie says nothing about its nutritional value. Froot Loops, Pepsi and Burger King's own French fries, for that matter, are also free of animal products, but few health advocates would seriously recommend consuming these foods as part of a well-balanced meal plan. Promoters of the BK Veggie are doing the public a serious disservice by suggesting that it is anything other than a highly processed, nutritionally deficient junk food that just happens to be meatless.
From an environmental standpoint, Burger King's new menu item is also not much to celebrate. A BK Veggie is produced with ingredients originating in disparate locations: The onions might come from Iowa, the smoke flavoring from New Jersey and the jalapeno powder from Mexico. They are brought to a central manufacturing plant, assembled, packaged and reshipped in their new "value-added" incarnation to Burger King franchises far and wide. This method of producing and distributing food draws heavily on fossil fuels and other nonrenewable resources, a price that our beleaguered ecosphere can ill afford to pay.
True, the ecological footprint of a BK Veggie is appreciably lighter than that left by one of the chain's highly resource-consumptive meat sandwiches. But trumpeting the marginal environmental benefits of a mass-produced industrial pseudo-food--meatless though it may be--does little more than supply the Burger King PR machine with a ready source of greenwash.
Finally, there is the question of animal welfare. Does the addition of the BK Veggie to the Burger King menu stand to improve the plight of the 9 billion animals slaughtered each year for human consumption? In a recent article, vegetarian activist Erik Marcus warned that if the BK Veggie flops, "it might set the growth of the movement [to protect animals] back 10 years." That's an awful lot to hang on the fate of one sandwich. The truth is, Burger King's new entree will do little to keep animals out of the slaughterhouse. What it will do is lend a patina of green respectability to a corporation whose appetite for dead animals is as robust as its desire for greater profits and increased market share. Consumers who believe that purchasing a BK Veggie will encourage the company to scale back its efforts to sell as many meat sandwiches as possible will be sadly disappointed.
Let's not forget that Burger King has been a leading force behind such "enlightened" policies as suburban sprawl, the homogenization and commodification of the global food supply and the backlash against unions and food- and restaurant-industry workers worldwide--points well documented by Eric Schlosser in his best-selling book, "Fast Food Nation." Burger King, McDonald's and the other corporate giants that command the industrial food economy have no vested interest in fundamentally restructuring it.
Some may object that we can't change the system overnight and that people are used to eating fast food, so isn't the availability of a meatless burger in a major chain a step in the right direction? Well, yes, it is a step, but a step toward what, exactly? A nation in which animal-based foods are replaced by plant foods transformed into products bearing little resemblance to actual plants? Our modern food economy was built on the promise of "better eating through technology." We should be working to create a more just, humane and sustainable food system that provides people with produce in its whole, unadulterated form--as nature meant for it to be eaten. Pinning our hopes for a better food system on the fortunes of the Burger King empire's latest junk food amounts to a rather depressing surrender of the imagination.



Macdonalds

Type Public Traded as NYSE: MCD
Dow Jones Industrial Average Component Industry Restaurants Founded May 15, 1940 in San Bernardino, California;
McDonald's Corporation, April 15, 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois Founder(s) Richard and Maurice McDonald McDonald's restaurant concept;
Ray Kroc, McDonald's Corporation founder. Headquarters Oak Brook, Illinois, U.S. Number of locations 32,000+ worldwide[1] Area served Worldwide Key people James A. Skinner
(Chairman & CEO) Products Fast food
(hamburgers • chicken • french fries • soft drinks • coffee • milkshakes • salads • desserts • breakfast)




McDonald’s Advances Public Relations, Not Public Health

Statement of CSPI Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson
April 15, 2004
The McDonald’s announcement advances public relations more than it does public health. The company’s small steps seem more designed to forestall the big steps that government should be taking to prevent obesity and heart disease.
Government should be pushing big-step solutions like requiring nutrition information on menus and menu boards, getting junk-food ads off kids’ television, and getting junk food out of schools. Government—-Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson in particular—-should be pushing these big steps instead of playing pattycake with one of the world’s biggest junk-food producers.
Consumers have good reason to be skeptical about the company’s latest promises, since the company broke its promise to reformulate its trans-fat-laden cooking oil. By frying in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, McDonald’s recklessly promotes heart disease among its consumers. It could prolong the lives of its customers by simply switching to liquid vegetable oil. It should also use lower-fat meat, lower-fat cheese, lower the salt content in many of its products, and continue to expand the number of healthful items on its menu.
I’m glad that McDonald’s says it will promote its salads, and hand out step meters, and so on. Those are all good things. But if McDonald’s were sincere about promoting healthy eating, it would put calorie counts right on menu boards.
McDonald's on the ball in PR battle

McDonald's is upping the ante in its PR battle against critics who link its food with childhood obesity by funding the training of 10,000 community football coaches across the country.
The company has trained 5,100 local club level football coaches across the UK since 2002 and hopes its efforts will have a trickle-down effect in the battle against the negative PR that is engulfing the company.
Unlike Walkers, which promoted a school books campaign, McDonald's prefers a low key approach, advertising on noticeboards about local football teams in its outlets rather than through a large advertising campaign.
"It's a community programme for McDonald's, it's not a marketing programme," said Caron Beith, the head of Leo Sports, a division of Leo Burnett, McDonald's advertising agency.
The coaching programming is one plank in McDonald's PR strategy in the obesity debate.
The company has stepped up advertising its salads and healthy foods to counter negative publicity surrounding the release of the anti-McDonald's documentary, Super Size Me, in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock damaged his liver after eating nothing but McDonald's food for a month.
On Friday McDonald's launched a new phase in its healthy eating campaign with a newspaper advertisement asking readers, "Don't fancy a Hamburger?" and answering, "Then you have come to the right place." Another advert promoted its salads in press adverts with the caption, "Funny looking fries".
Ms Beith said the community programme had benefits for McDonald's in the obesity PR war. "McDonald's uses the coaching programme to encourage people to be more active," she said.
The coaches are recruited and trained by the Football Association in England, and the relevant associations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But children and their parents cannot fail to be aware that McDonald's funds them. The coaches wear tracksuits with McDonald's logos and use 16 footballs supplied in two kit bags that are branded with the McDonald's logo.
"When Ray Kroc started McDonald's, being a part of the community was part of his ethos," Ms Beith said.
The company is on track to achieve its target of training 10,000 coaches by 2006. It has a long-standing history in sponsoring grassroots football in Britain. By the end of 2004, it will have invested £21.2m such programmes since 1995.
To date 400 McDonald's staff have become coaches and police in Cardiff have used the programme to build links with young people in deprived areas.
When the programme ends in two years the FA will have trained 8,000 coaches in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland football associations will train 2000 coaches.
The programme has generated good PR for the brand. In January pop singer Justin Timberlake, who sings the global McDonald's jingle I'm Lovin' It, dropped in on Berryhill Primary School in Scotland with Kenny Dalglish, the head of McDonald's Scottish football, for a coaching session.




McDonald's new ads: Would you like some facts with that?




The new packaging features a map of New Zealand and information about ingredients.
McDonald's is rolling out the next phase of its myth-busting Take a Closer Look campaign with new packaging from the middle of next month.
The Big Mac packaging, which will feature a map of New Zealand and nutritional information, aims to show the company's commitment to local ingredients.
It's a departure from the red and yellow packaging seen around the globe.
It will have labelling showing how much of the ideal daily intake of energy, protein, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugar and sodium the product contains.
Public scepticism forced McDonald's to launch a $3.5 million advertising campaign last month to tackle myths about its food.
Among the stories it aims to dispel through TV commercials, a new website and question-and-answer sessions is the rumour it puts pig fat in its shakes.
It also is spreading the message that the company's hamburger patties are made from 100 per cent beef and many of its ingredients are brands commonly available in supermarkets.
McDonald's spent around $20 million in the year to June on advertising, according to Nielsen Media, making it one of the country's top 20 advertisers.
Auckland University of Technology senior advertising lecturer Dave Bibby said the campaign "lacks the sparkle" of the company's past advertising and was "overtly defensive".
One of the rules of advertising was to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative - but the Take a Closer Look scheme seemed to dwell on the negative. He said the launch of its salads menu with ads featuring Sarah Ulmer was a better strategy than "trying to convince the doubters, who are probably not going to be convinced anyway".
Obesity Action Coalition executive director Celia Murphy, a former dietitian, said the advertising campaign did nothing to change the problem of people who ate too much of the company's products.
"So what if their meat is 100 per cent beef - they are still using advertising tactics that we don't approve of," she said. "What they are aiming to do, of course, is reassure people that this is a marvellous place for them to eat. It doesn't change anything about McDonald's."
McDonald's Restaurants NZ managing director Grainne Troute said the ads aimed to correct damaging and "ludicrous" myths by presenting facts.
"If people don't trust your brand, then you have barriers around visiting you," she said. "What we are trying to do is remove those barriers where they have no basis, so that people feel more comfortable about coming to McDonald's - and coming to McDonald's more often."
She said the rumours were due to an "anti-sentiment" about the company - and added that McDonald's shakes did not contain pig fat and never had. "It's not true. Sometimes I will facetiously answer that question by saying 'why would we take out perfectly good dairy fat and put in pig fat?'
"It's one of those ludicrous things that you wonder how it gets such traction."
McDonald's will invite the public into its kitchens for a behind the scenes look later this year.





McDonald's one-day hiring blitz seen as PR move





McDonald's to hire 50,000
Mon, Apr 4 2011

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fast-food chain McDonald's Corp, trying to grab positive headlines in an economic recovery still struggling to create living-wage jobs, announced on Monday that it would do all of its spring hiring in one fell swoop.
The world's biggest hamburger chain -- which for years has wanted to stop the use of "McJob" as shorthand for low-wage, dead-end work -- said it plans to hire up to 50,000 new U.S. workers on April 19. The jobs range from restaurant crew to managers.
Janney Capital Markets analyst Mark Kalinowski told Reuters that the announcement "certainly seems like a way to attract some favorable publicity around something it was more or less going to do anyway."
McDonald's said the hiring blitz would increase its U.S. workforce by 7.7 percent to 700,000 -- which is no different from prior summer staff increases.
"Our total hires are similar to past years, but the goal of hiring 50,000 people in one day across the U.S. is unique," McDonald's spokeswoman Ashlee Yingling told Reuters.
Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's said in a statement that its April hiring event is an opportunity to highlight that "a McJob is one with career growth and endless possibilities."
Many of McDonald's top executives and franchisees worked their way up the company ranks, the spokeswoman pointed out.
McDonald's hourly restaurant workers often make more than $8 per hour, the company spokeswoman said. That is above minimum wage but comes to just $16,640 annually for a person working 40 hours a week with no time off. The federal poverty cut-off for an individual is $10,890.
The new hires could nudge up April employment numbers but a job paying about $320 a week -- 40 hours at $8 an hour -- would offer only slight relief to workers whose unemployment benefits are running out or who want to do more than eke out a living.
The average unemployment benefit was about $300 per week in early 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The goal of the unemployment benefits program is to provide people with about half their normal wage.
There are some 14,000 McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Ninety percent of them are run by franchisees, and what they pay their workers varies by ownership.
McDonald's February sales at its U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier.
U.S. employment grew firmly for a second straight month in March and the jobless rate hit a two-year low of 8.8 percent, underscoring a decisive shift in the labor market that should help to underpin the recovery.
Income for the top-earning Americans has risen sharply since the 1980s but the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs has led to stagnation for everyone else.





How to have "Good PR"

What is good PR?

1. Good PR is telling the client what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. Good PR recognizes that the best “PR strategy” needs to be followed-up with the client’s good products/services or else it’s all a vain and wasted effort that harms everyone’s reputation.
2. Good PR is not just about the over-glorified launch. Good PR helps build and sustain a groundswell of brand support — incrementally changing consumer behaviors via a steady stream of relevant and candid communication to both “media” and “consumers.”
3. Good PR celebrates the client’s customers in an inclusive, non-exploitive way. And, good PR welcomes the input of “neutrals” and especially “critics,” and adapts strategy accordingly.
4. Good PR is proactive in idea generation and responsive in a crisis. Good PR finds the balance.
5. Good PR is measurable. (And yet also hard to measure, since most clients want to measure different things.)
6. Good PR leverages pre-existing relationships with influential people — relationships built on trust and credibility earned over years of service.
7. Good PR doesn’t need to know Larry Ellison or Kevin Rose or anyone in particular in the media, either. Even though such relationships can come in handy, good PR almost always “gets ink” because a good story has been well-told to the right people.

These “7 Elements of Good PR” may seem simplistic and high-falutin’, yet they sum up 17 years’ worth of hard lessons in this industry. PR is hard work, strategic work, underpromoted and infinitely interesting work — hard to describe or appreciate until you’re in the trenches.