McDonald's // recruitment // uniform
‘How do you change peoples perceptions of a ‘McJob’? Simple. Just print 25,000 t-shirts’
When we were asked to help recruit staff for McDonald's we thought - lots of the people who go to McDonalds could really enjoy working there.
But we had a problem, people saw the staff in McDonald’s as robots with ‘McJobs’.
However we met lots of staff, and heard how they were treated and it’s actually a pretty amazing company to work for… but more importantly the people weren’t McRobots… they were smart, funny, interesting people… we just needed to help people notice and engage with them, make them a bit cooler.
We decided to break down these barriers, by giving the staff uniforms* a little of the real personality of the people who wore them, we tackled peoples opinions head on and got the gag in before they did. The going price for the 'my boss is a clown' T was rumoured to be around 50 euro. Alas I only have a pic.
What I also like about this idea, and why it's in my book, is sometimes you don't need to spend a lot of cash to solve a problem. Yes we had the budget to make a TV commercial (and we did) but what made a bigger difference was a bunch of t-shirts that cost £3 each. It's something I try to remember.
*Wouldn't of happened without the head of marketing - she was a legend.