It’s difficult for big/old brands to promote diversity – especially when they have been held up to criticism for not having society’s best interest at heart from time to time. The Grease campaign did tremendous damage to the brand along with a myriad of other challenges in local markets.

Not long ago, the McDonald’s brand was failing many doubted it could make the journey it did. Without getting into the detail of McDonald’s virtues and sins, I remain impressed with the scale of the change effort the leadership has put into coaxing this brand in the 21st century.

In the meantime, introducing diversity topics is an interesting way to build goodwill, restore some of the nice-guy image and deepen the meaning of the brand. It’s a good example of how to increase brand equity in a new area while repairing a brand in an old area.

The ad seems to dovetail nicely with this Swwedish employment ad put out recently. American observers say that the ‘gay’ ad will never get play in the US and this might be true. Maybe it does not matter whether diversity ads can be used across different countries since diversity issues vary from country to country. McDonald’s can easily find the right context to promote the overall theme of diversity in the land of freedom in order to continue to build on this platform.

+ 34 McDonalds innovations (just good clean fun)
+ Knowmore.org report on McDonalds