McDonalds as a Luxury Brand
“We often say we are what we eat, or we are what we wear?” —Dana Thomas
McDonalds continues to surprise – and impress – us with its shameless and opportunistic ideas above its station…
Traditional luxury brand strategy depends on brands knowing their place, but increasingly the grammar of luxury brands is being used by brands far outside the luxury universe. Nobody is working harder than McDonalds to investigate opportunities here…
Last year, they began a $1B to update the look of restaurants in Europe — (via New York Times)
They recently took on a price war with Starbucks, whose hasty reaction with heavy discounting suggested that they had suffered a direct hit. Smelling blood, last week McDonalds launched their Unsnobby Coffee Intervention.
And now McDonalds appears to have upped the ante once again… British fashion designer, Bruce Oldfield, has just revamped the McDonalds uniforms, complete with Louis Vuitton-esque palate, and and an LV-ish logo…
It’s a particularly interesting ‘tribute’, since last year Dana Thomas described Louis Vuitton as the “McDonald’s of the luxury industry†in her book Deluxe.
Interestingly, at a time when logos are more visible than ever at Louis Vuitton, the designer for McDonald’s was asked not to use the iconic ‘golden arches’ for the new uniforms…
The pattern bears more than a passing resemblance to the Louis Vuitton logo, but Mr Oldfield insisted it was not deliberate. “I wanted to use the golden arches but I was told I couldn’t because of company policy, so I had to have a re-think. I think it looks chic and modern, and the girls look really good. — (Via The Telegraph, UK)
