“Would You Like Fries With That?”

This question has become legendary – reported to have generated $5 Billion for McDonald’s… Of course whenever a GREAT idea is used, others jump on the bandwagon with total abandon, hoping to re-create the original success. Sometimes, as in this example – the imitator puts a new spin on it. Sometimes it works and sometimes well… it’s taken a little too far.

Today’s lesson is two-fold (1) Life’s too short to be too serious and (2) whenever you take a great idea, be careful not to take it to an extreme or distort the ORIGINAL intention of the strategy.

Often the success is all about the NUANCE. For example “Would you like fries with that?” was an INSTANT success, but the alternate “Would you like an apple pie with that?” was not. People did not associate hot apple pies with hamburgers, even though the apple pies were good.