From The Head Of Zeus Jones

Came across a couple of pieces of in-store signage which are really great examples of how delivering services can actually communicate more.

First was this from the McDonald’s at MSP:

Instead of doing a simple “help-wanted” sign in the window, they posted this career guide showing the job progression one might expect from working at McDonald’s. I think this works really well as a help-wanted ad because it goes directly at the prejudice that a job at McDonald’s is a dead end career. By showing and describing the different duties, I think they’ll definitely get more and a better class of applicant than before.

However, I think this also does double-duty as a corporate ad from McDonald’s. My thoughts upon seeing it were:

1. They’re hiring: in this economy that’s impressive – business can’t be that bad for them.
2. They’re taking recruitment seriously and that implies customer service is important to them
3. The descriptions of the different jobs gave me a better understanding of McD’s operations and you know how I think operations are marketing and vice versa.
4. Bravo on not doing the easy and forgettable thing! Instead someone there saw this as a chance to say something more about the company.

Can’t say I’ll eat there any more but it’s a better brand ad than I’ve seen from them in a very long time.

Second was this sign that captured my family’s attention (and dollars) at Target this weekend. These have been around for a while but I still think they’re really smart. Basically they’ve provided space for local schools to stick printouts of all the materials (pens, folders, glue sticks, etc.) required for students. You find your school, pick up your list and go shopping.

My youngest daughter is starting school this September and we discovered that her school materials list was one of the ones in the slots. Of course we ended up filling the list there at Target. Not only is this a really smart merchandising strategy, but it also ties directly – and is a demonstration of – Target’s CSR initiatives around schools like Take Charge of Education.

Similar to my reaction upon seeing the McDonald’s sign, this made me respect Target (and its marketing department) even more and communicated more to me about who they are as a company than most of its advertising (which I actually like for the most part).

These two programs are so smart and so easy to execute I wonder why there aren’t more examples of people/retailers doing this sort of stuff. In part, the reason they’re so cool is that the expectations for the typical help-wanted ad or back-to-school poster are so low. It goes to show that thinking just a little bit about stuff no one else thinks about really goes a long way.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under McDonald's, marketing service, recruitment, schools, services, targeting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.