LOS ANGELES -- The question of the moment at 700 pioneering McDonald's restaurants: You want TV with those fries?
Not
just any television, but the custom-made M Channel, formulated and
tested with the same attention to detail that made Big Macs and Chicken
McNuggets cultural icons.
The channel's aim is
to offer exclusive content to entertain customers. More ambitiously, it
also intends to create promotional and sales opportunities for record
companies and others who want to dive into McDonald's vast customer
pool.
Lee Edmondson, who has spent more than
eight years developing the concept for McDonald's and years beforehand
pondering it, said the fast-food chain is thinking way outside the TV
box.
"It is a vision that is more than
television," more than the "passive relationship" that viewers have with
gas station or supermarket TV feeds, said Edmondson, who comes from a
venture-capital background.
The M channel is
akin to a broadcast network with its own news, entertainment and
sportscasts localized for cities and even neighborhoods, he said. But
there's more: It will supersize the experience by directing viewers
online for shopping or other opportunities.
Get
details on a featured electronic toy or be among the first to download a
music video discovered via M Channel. Want to get close to artists you
heard on your coffee break? Enter to win backstage concert passes or
maybe lunch with them (just a guess, but the location may not be
optional).
M Channel's goal is to target
different audiences at different times of day and be so area-specific
that a restaurant could show high school football game highlights to
hometown fans, Edmondson said. News reports are taped by local station
anchors for the channel.
Among those who have
enlisted as content providers are producer Mark Burnett ("Survivor,"
''The Voice"), ReelzChannel and broadcast stations. A range of
advertisers, minus other restaurants and perhaps alcoholic beverages,
will be welcome, Edmondson said.
For now, the
programming is in its infancy. At a McDonald's in Costa Mesa, south of
Los Angeles, a flat-screen TV tucked in a corner showed an hour-long
loop that included weather; a trivia quiz that promoted "Jeopardy!";
features on windsurfing in Maui and auto racing, and a Hollywood movie
report packaged by ReelzChannel.
A mom
grabbing a meal with her two children briefly glanced at a tech segment
on back-to-school products including computers and smartphones before
exiting.
Other diners sitting close to the TV
were buried in their laptops, phones or magazines, the screen showing
the distinctive arched "M'' logo merely providing wallpaper.
Ruby
Lua of Santa Ana, who works at a nearby supermarket, took a break from
texting to say she preferred the satellite feed the restaurant used to
show. How about if the channel offered music and related downloads?
"That would be more interesting," said the 18-year-old Lua, perking up.
That opening is just what Edmondson wants to exploit.
"If
you see a piece of content that connects with you immediately, we've
provided you a value," he said. "If we can do it consistently, we become
a trusted source of information ... and a great way for content
providers to engage with consumers."
Major music companies are intrigued.
"Interscope
values a new way of communicating to customers where our content is
positioned front and center to a massive audience," said Jennifer
Frommer, the company's head of brand partnerships. "The channel provides
a platform to market music in ways that have never been done before."
The
pilot project, which began testing in scattered Western outlets two
years ago, recently completed expansion to all McDonald's California
outlets from San Diego north to Bakersfield. All told, the eateries get
nearly 15 million monthly visits from adult customers alone.
M
Channel could expand to the roughly 14,000 McDonald's nationwide within
18 months of getting the "go" from the company and franchisees,
Edmondson said. He declined to predict when the green light could come
for the project that has advanced with caution, the giant chain's
approach to making changes.
The end game
Edmondson foresees: Versions of the channel in McDonald's worldwide, and
perhaps the birth of a template for other industries. So far, the
investor-funded Channel M has consumed tens of millions of dollars and
it "will be that again to pull it off," he said, declining to give an
exact figure.
The M channel is "a smart thing
to do," said Valerie Folkes, a marketing professor at the University of
Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
TV
sets, which originally sprouted in auto service shops and elsewhere to
keep customers distracted while cooling their heels, have new potential
in a splintered media market.
"Advertisers
face difficulties not only in reaching the right people but also in
capturing their attention," Folkes said. "Here they have people who they
know are customers and who are more inclined to listen to their
message."
How will McDonald's Corp. judge M Channel's value?
"Ad
revenues are important, but the channel must be positively received by
our customers in order to be viewed as a success," said Brad Hunter,
senior marketing director for McDonald's USA.
Philip
Palumbo, who owns 11 McDonald's in San Diego County and is the
marketing co-op head for the county's outlets, has seen an immediate
benefit from the pilot project: No more complaints to workers about the
network fare his customers saw via satellite.
"The
content was not necessarily appropriate," Palumbo said. "The big things
were politics. Others were violence, usually on the news, or medical
stuff like showing surgery."
As Folkes of USC
put it, "You can imagine a news story about 'pink slime' is not going to
make a McDonald's customer eager to eat that Big Mac."
USAS Today