By now, many of you have seen the painful promo video of the McDonald’s CEO eating the chain’s new Big Arch Burger.
The agonizing 90 seconds is just “cringe” as the middle schoolers say.
It’s pretty obvious that this guy is in work mode. He’s speaking in jargon (what normal person calls a burger a ‘product’?!), he looks like he’s forcing himself to eat the darn thing, and the whole video is just sterile and overly staged.
Where the Buck Stops
A lot of folks are blaming the McDonald’s marketing team- how could they let this happen? Why didn’t they push back? They should never have posted this on social media! And so on.
But here’s the thing. How many times have you done what the boss wanted even when you don’t agree with the direction. How often are you willing to say, “this is garbage, we need to change the strategy”?
What about with your client? What if they want to do something that you know definitively is not the right move?
We were talking in the office about how often this happens in the professional service industry overall, and in construction specifically.
On our website we talk about what makes us different – it says we listen a whole lot more than we talk. And that is definitely true. But in light of this McDonald’s gaffe, we asked ourselves: what do we do when we disagree with what we’re hearing?
Knowledge is Power
We’re not giving opinions on what color your paint should be. We leave that to the designers who know a lot more about color than we do. But you better believe that we’re going to let our experience lead the way and speak up if we feel you’re going in the wrong construction direction.
– Are you choosing an open ceiling even though the sound will be unbearable in your restaurant?
– Are you overbuying mechanical systems for your business?
– Are you choosing a floor stain that will wear off over time? Because sometimes the picture in your head is not what we know it will look like in real life.
We’re not shy about sharing our knowledge. We want to help you build your business for the long term, and the right build out is your first step.
Is there a limit to that push and pull? Sure. If we make a recommendation and you disagree, you have every right to overrule us and we’ll respect that. And heck, do we get it right all the time? Listen, our company is 122 years old, so we’re not in the teenage stage where we’re stomping our feet and insisting we’re always right. We’ll tell you though, if we had a quarter for every time a client came back and said, “man I wish I would have listened to you”, well, we’d probably all be retired on a beach in Jamaica by now.
Shout out to the Marketing Team
For now, let’s empathize with the McDonald’s marketing team. We’re sure they pushed back the best way they knew how. So let’s all go out and enjoy some ‘product’ with fries – we’re willing to bet we’ll enjoy it a lot more than Mr. CEO.
