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Some observers attribute McDonald’s success in France to its embrace of French eating habits and locally sourced ingredients, including cheese, potatoes and grass-fed beef, a product line augmented by baguettes, pastries and macaroons, and even a separate Halal menu for the country’s large Islamic population. I agree, but also believe that the chain’s success in France is in part a rebellion against the national tradition of multihour, multicourse meals, with no one permitted to leave the table until everyone else is done eating. A similar rebellion can be seen in the phenomenal success of Picard, France’s frozen-food chain and the largest chain of its kind in the world. Every one of Picard’s 500 boutique-like stores is noticeably sterile, almost hospital-like, in appearance, with Picard’s private-label meat, shellfish, potatoes, vegetables and desserts for sale stacked in waist-high freezers. With a majority of French women working outside the home, frozen food in France has been such a popular trend that even some Michelin-starred restaurants have taken to using frozen ingredients.
McDo’s may differ aesthetically from McDonald’s in the United States, but both markets adhere to the company’s core principles, foremost among which is that McDonald’s isn’t a place for children, or adolescents, to just hang out, but for families to visit together. And across France, families were flocking to McDonald’s. After traveling around the country paying visits to franchises in small towns and cities, I found myself facing a uniquely French imbalance. The presence of French families in its restaurants may have been good news for McDonald’s bottom line, but it also suggested that the opportunities for French parents to connect with their children were diminishing. When I began interviewing French parents, two things stood out: both parents worked outside the home, and neither believed they were spending enough time with their kids.
Across the world, the Happy Meal, which was launched in the late 1970s, appears under different aliases, from Joyeux Festin in Canada to Cajita Feliz, or “Happy Little Meal in a Box,” in Latin America. Then, as now, a Happy Meal consists of the choice of a hamburger, cheeseburger or Chicken McNuggets; a small order of French fries; and a soda. As everyone knows, the Happy Meal also includes a toy that connects to a popular family-oriented television show, movie or preexisting toy line.
My position was that McDonald’s needed to show the world it could achieve anything—and that included proving that healthy food could be “fun,” a feat, I might add, that no company had ever accomplished. I went to work—or, more precisely, I went for a swim in a public Olympic-sized swimming pool in a waterfront suburb of Sydney, Australia, known as Milson’s Point.
The reason I prefer to stay in hotels equipped with swimming pools is that pools are where good ideas come to me. I’m not alone. Lots of people are inspired by the presence of water, whether they’re strolling along a beach, taking a shower or even listening to water running or to a soundtrack of waves hitting the shore. The Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer Archimedes was said to have discovered the principles around density and buoyancy as he drew a bath, and songwriter Pharrell Williams begins each morning the same way: “I shower, and that’s where a lot of my concepts come from,” Pharrell told Fast Company. He even composes songs under a nozzle. “If you don’t interrupt (your subconscious) with the ego, or are like, No it’s gotta be like this, then a lot of ideas will come. Once you start judging it and editing it, then you’re no longer tapped in . . . so I spend a lot of that time just standing there in the water with a blank stare.”8
Why good ideas tend to materialize in pools, lakes, ponds, oceans, showers and tubs is harder to figure out. A popular explanation is that, while we may not realize it, most of us are rarely inside the present moment. We spend a disproportionate amount of time plotting the future or revisiting past events. But when we swim, or shower, or take a bath, we have little choice but to position ourselves in the present, giving our thoughts room to float and wander (though more and more young people tell me they take their phones into the shower with them and, keeping them at arms’ distance, send and answer texts). When we actively pursue answers or solutions to a problem, they almost never materialize, but when we engage in routine, relaxing activities that require little active thought, they do. Shelley H. Carson, a Harvard University researcher and psychologist, said once that if we’re troubled by a problem, any interruption in focus provides “an incubation period . . . In other words, a distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution.”9
At the same time, a certain kind of activity is better than others at encouraging new or good ideas. Ideally, that activity is both routinized and inventive, like running, bicycling or gardening. All three involve implicit, automatic motions that are also improvisational, allowing disparate ideas to come together. Over the course of my own career, I’ve taken to calling these revelations “Water Moments,” and the one I had about McDonald’s Happy Meal clicked for me that day at Milson’s Point.
It was late afternoon, and I was doing laps, swimming alone in the center lane. At one point I became aware of a nearby café selling the usual summertime stuff—hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries and onion rings. Children were playing around the shallow end of the pool, and one, I saw, was munching on a carrot stick. Probably some Australian quirk, I remember thinking, and then I noticed the children were speaking in German. Halfway through my hour-long swim, a few things had become clearer.
The biggest problem with the Happy Meal, as I saw it, was how prosaic it was. It was exactly as advertised, and not much more than that. It didn’t inspire imaginative play, nor was there much fantasy or magic connected to it. As soon as they opened their Happy Meals, children grabbed the enclosed toy, ate their meal, and that was that. There was no story line, no space for them to imagine, or dream.
The new Happy Meal—Happy Meal 2.0, as it eventually came to be called—was inspired by the pool’s three swimming lanes. Each lane, I thought, could reflect an ingredient of McDonald’s new children’s meal. One lane represented tomatoes; another carrots; a third broccoli. The only question was finding a concept, and a story line, that combined all three vegetables.
With the help of a creative team in Denmark, the idea quickly evolved from there. By themselves, vegetables—a bowl of peas, a side of broccoli—aren’t all that compelling. But string them onto a necklace, or emboss a carrot in the form of a monster and suddenly vegetables become fun. Over the next few weeks, the team and I came up with a short list of concepts, including a prototype for a new, environmentally friendlier Happy Meal 2.0 container. We realized as well that if the goal was to convince children to eat cucumbers, or tomatoes, or broccoli, McDonald’s had to continue its longtime relationship with toys linked to companies like Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar.
We began with the idea that children would find it more interesting to assemble their own hamburgers. Our first Happy Meal 2.0 concept featured a small dragon holding a hamburger bun, with a bare hamburger patty resting nearby. Navigating past a tomato slice, and over “stairs” made out of cucumber strips and carrot bars, children could then uncover a miniature Shrek or Princess Fiona. Our second prototype, “Space,” was based on the Space Shuttle. A tomato rested in the cockpit, while carrot sticks manned the back doors, alongside a small bag of melon balls, which children could spear with a small plastic wand. Once kids had managed to find three special numbers hidden on the cockpit floor, they could crack the Space Shuttle’s “code” to uncover their hamburgers or chicken nuggets. Happy Meal 2.0 had several others advantages, too. Parents could observe the unfamiliar phenomenon of their children actually enjoying vegetables, mothers could take comfort in the fact they weren’t feeding their kids junk and fathers could take their children to McDonald’s without risking criticism from their wives.
When I presented my ideas to the senior management of McDonald’s Europe, they were enthusiastic. So why, you might be wondering, isn’t the veggie-based Happy Mea
l 2.0 a staple of McDonald’s fast-food restaurants across the globe? Unfortunately, the concept fell victim to operational obstacles and went nowhere. When a company as large and complex as McDonald’s has been manufacturing Happy Meals for 30 years, and operating multiple factories that focus exclusively on food container and toy manufacturing—McDonald’s is the largest distributor of toys in the world—it is just too difficult, and too expensive, to change course. What’s more, the company schedules new additions to their menu up to 18 months before they come to market. There were other obstacles, too, including the need to invest in new machinery, find new licensees and educate and retrain thousands of McDonald’s employees, and the shelf life of vegetables themselves. Carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes can’t be frozen without turning soggy, or losing their taste or shape. In hindsight, Project Happy Meal 2.0 is an initiative I believe I could carry off today with my greater experience with people and politics, but a decade ago it was just too daunting.
Cut to a few years ago when Jenny Craig, the weight loss and nutrition company, contacted me, hoping I could come up with a new marketing innovation to ensure consumer loyalty and make the Jenny Craig brand more “sticky” among dieters.
Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1983 by two American expatriates, Jenny and Sidney Craig, Jenny Craig’s philosophy is that losing weight is as simple as reducing calories, portion size and fat content. When dieters walk into one of Jenny Craig’s weight-loss centers—there are 450 across the United States—they pay an enrollment fee, sign up for weekly one-on-one sessions with a Jenny Craig counselor, many of whom are former Jenny Craig members themselves, and choose from one of several set menus of Jenny Craig frozen foods. The diet ranges from 1,200 to 2,300 calories daily, with the average Jenny Craig client spending around $100 a week on breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, and remaining on the program for around 12 weeks. By contrast, Jenny Craig’s chief rival, Weight Watchers, allocates points to thousands of foods and drinks, which members are told not to exceed. Weight Watchers dieters attend weekly meetings, and can also access advice and support from online forums. In short, if the mission of Weight Watchers is to equip dieters with awareness about what they’re eating, Jenny Craig, with its frozen-food lines, does a lot of the work for them.
When Jenny Craig hired me, the company was a colossus, a corporate machine with approximately 700 diet centers in Canada, the United States, France, Puerto Rico, Australia and New Zealand. Since 2002, it had survived the usual corporate turmoil that takes place once a founder leaves a company, and it was on its third owner. Jenny Craig had both the advantages and disadvantages of a global business that could almost run itself. It was an organized machine, but it had lost some of the personality and intimacy that had led to its success. It also wasn’t cheap, and the dropout rates were higher than they should have been. Could I come up with a new initiative to increase the odds that new dieters would stick with Jenny Craig, recommend it to their friends and, ideally, serve as brand ambassadors?
After nearly two months of conducting Subtext Research across Southern California and elsewhere, I’d developed a profile of the average Jenny Craig dieter. Let’s call her Caroline. (Jenny Craig offers a customized program for men, as well as teens, diabetics and elderly people, but the majority of Jenny Craig clients are female.) Caroline was a woman anywhere between the age of 30 and 45, married, with children. She enjoyed watching television game shows, and kept the television on in the background as she carried out her chores and family responsibilities. She was also noticeably superstitious. She didn’t let a day go by without glancing at her horoscope in the newspaper. She also visited eBay more often than the average woman, and bought more lottery and scratch tickets than most.
What explained Caroline’s ritualized—and to me, unusually superstitious—behavior? In principle, the answer was simple. When we gamble, our brains release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that floods our senses whenever we anticipate anything rewarding, from food to alcohol to sex. Reading a horoscope, it seemed to me, was largely about the attempt to control a world that seemed chaotic, and superstitious behavior links back to control itself, an issue in the lives of many dieters. But what reward might a Jenny Craig dieter be anticipating? There really wasn’t one. Both Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers promise clients that if they stay on the program, they’ll lose one or two pounds a week, but in this case, losing a pound didn’t seem to be enough.
The question was: What was Caroline, and each Jenny Craig dieter I interviewed, compensating for? When they checked their daily horoscope, or bought lottery tickets, or bid on clothing and appliances on eBay, what were they getting or, rather, what were they not getting?
My concept of a new way to approach this question took place during an interview with a 52-year-old housewife and mother in her carpeted, suburban home in Carlsbad, California. Her name was Jan. Her 26-year-old daughter lived in a nearby suburb, but when I asked about the young man I kept seeing in photos wearing a military uniform, Jan told me her son had died in battle overseas. As her eyes filled with tears, her fingers grasped the charm bracelet she was wearing around her wrist. Gently, I asked her if there was any connection between the loss of her son and the bracelet around her wrist. There was. The airplane charm on her bracelet couldn’t help but remind her of her son, an Air Force pilot in love with planes and flying ever since he was a boy. When I asked what would happen if she ever lost the bracelet, Jan shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it.
Why do women—and men for that matter—wear jewelry in the first place? A few years before I began working for Jenny Craig, it was a question I asked consumers around the world on behalf of a Danish jewelry brand known as Trollbeads. Among the responses I got were as follows: “Jewelry enhances the way I look—and it makes me look pretty.” “People notice you, and you want to feel noticed, especially when you become a mother.” “It’s a very important fashion accessory. When I put on a necklace, or wear a certain bracelet, it changes my whole outfit and my whole attitude, too.” “Jewelry is timeless—it never goes out of style.” “Jewelry is just something other people are drawn to automatically.” Above all else, it seemed, jewelry was an essential talking point when two women were trying to establish an emotional connection.
Despite its un-euphonious name, Trollbeads is an extremely successful jewelry company with a presence in 35 countries, including Holland, Italy, Switzerland and China. Trollbeads’ handmade bracelets, rings and necklaces vary in size and are made from Murano glass, freshwater pearls, gemstones, leather, glass and Swarovski crystal. Still, when I began consulting for the company, I wasn’t quite prepared for the fanaticism of Trollbeads’ core customers. Most were middle-aged, with a competent, slightly tough manner about them. None, overall, were especially trusting, and a few expressed unease about having an interviewer come into their house and ask them questions. Many told me they’d felt excluded as children, or as high school or college students. On the surface, they may have been hardworking and accomplished, but inside they were superstitious, compulsive, vulnerable and adept at hiding high levels of stress. Trollbeads, it seemed, gave many of them the chance to reveal a creative, interesting, highly visual person they’d never been able to express comfortably in other social situations, and also helped them forge a powerful sense of belonging with other Trollbeads fans across the world.
Trollbeads, I realized, were far more than random pieces of silver, gold or glass. Trollbeads were fun. Trollbeads were personal. Trollbeads were whimsical. Trollbeads were almost human. One Dutch Trollbeads fan told me she devoted anywhere from eight to ten hours a week to international conference calls with other Trollbeads fans as far away as South Africa and Asia. Another woman likened Trollbeads’ passionate following to her own family growing up. “From the time I was young, my family and I all had a secret language—eye movements, hand gestures, facial expressions,” she said. “I have that today with my own children and my husband, and I have i
t with other Trollbeads fans.” What’s more, each colored bead that Trollbeads put out signified something that “only I, and the other person, know about.” The biggest revelation: each and every Trollbead women collected served as a badge of honor, or a memento, that signified a cherished time or event in their lives.
The question remained: What was behind this particular obsession? How did it begin, and why? Most of the women I spoke to were mothers, and I soon realized that their obsession with Trollbeads began when their teenage children began closing the doors to their bedrooms, thereby shutting their mothers out of their lives. Most of the women I spoke to described this moment as shattering, akin almost to a death. After all, they’d spent the past decade and a half attending to their children’s needs and desires. They were cooks, chauffeurs and confidantes. In many cases, becoming a mother had given many of them visibility, influence and power for the first time in their lives. Now, without warning, psychologically at least, they’d been, temporarily, closed out of their children’s lives.
The vacuum, or imbalance, that I kept seeing? Many of these women no longer had someone who relied on them, or sought them out. They’d become invisible, and for women who admitted feeling left out or socially excluded during their lives, this was especially difficult.
In the marketing world, an “entry point” refers to those times in our lives—among them marriage, pregnancy, first parenthood, buying a home, the empty nest—when identity is either challenged or transformed. During these periods, consumers are especially vulnerable to new perspectives, as well as new brands; for Trollbeads users, the entry point appeared when their adolescent children closed their bedroom doors.
I couldn’t help but think of my experience with Trollbeads fans when Jan, the Jenny Craig dieter in Carlsbad, California, touched the airplane charm on her bracelet when discussing her late son. Like Jenny Craig dieters, Trollbeads fans were also dependent on their daily horoscopes, and many also knocked on wood for good luck. Every time a Trollbeads customer bought a new bead, it took on an emotional meaning and weight. One woman, for example, showed me a Trollbead she said was a gift from her late grandmother. Another woman displayed a Murano glass bead she’d bought to commemorate her daughter’s middle-school graduation.