This week sees the release of Michael Keaton’s new film and if you’ve ever eaten at McDonald’s, you might want to check it out at your local cinema.
The Founder, tells the story of Ray Kroc, a salesman who turned two brothers’ innovative fast food eatery, McDonald’s, into one of the biggest restaurant businesses in the world with a combination of ambition, persistence, and ruthlessness.
Given that the formative years of McDonald’s are topical this week, Eric Schlosser’s 2001 bestseller, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, is being mined for nuggets of information.
While you might know every detail about your nearest McDonald’s restaurant, there’s actually a subliminal message behind the famous golden arches.
In the ’60s, the company wanted to switch from their original symbol – two separate arches placed on either side of a McDonald’s building – towards the iconic “M” shape that we all know so well.
Schlosser states that when the company were thinking about rebranding and changing their logo, they hired design consultant and psychologist Louis Cheskin.
Cheskin informed the owners to interlock the golden arches, for a very interesting reason:
“He argued against completely eliminating the golden arches, claiming they had a great Freudian importance in the subconscious mind of consumers. According to Cheskin, the golden arches resembled a pair of large breasts: “mother McDonald’s breasts.”It made little sense to lose the appeal of that universal, and yet somehow all-American, symbolism. The company followed Cheskin’s advice and retained the golden arches, using them to form the M in McDonald’s”, Schlosser writes.
Further proof of the most cited belief in marketing, sex sells.
