McDonald's Brand History

McDonald's is a huge multi-national restaurant chain. There are restaurants all over the world that are willing to sell you a Big Mac and fries. Indeed, you would probably be hard-pushed to find a country that does not contain a few McDonald's restaurants somewhere within its borders. The company is now so big that you could be forgiven for thinking that it has always existed. But it hasn't. It was started in the first half of the 20th Century by two brothers - neither of whom was named Ronald.

The First Burger
Reports differ about when Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their first restaurant. Some would state that the Airdrome in Arcadia, California was the very first, opened in 1937. Others claim that it all began in 1940 with the McDonald's Barbecue restaurant in San Bernardino, California1. What is not in dispute, however, is that both of the above were false starts. They were both the kind of American restaurant where cars park around a central hub (where the food is prepared) and it is delivered to the waiting customers by 'car hops'.
In 1948 the brothers became disaffected by this style of restaurant, the pressures of a full menu, and the hassle of managing staff, and so decided to scale down the operation. They developed the idea of an 'assembly line' whereby a reduced menu (consisting only of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries and drinks) could be cooked cheaper and quicker, which would hopefully lead to a higher turnover of customers. And so it was, on 12 December, 1948, that the new revamped McDonald's Restaurant opened, and Richard McDonald cooked the first McDonald's hamburger.
During the next few years, the restaurant went from strength to strength, and the building had a slight redesign. The brothers had a slender yellow arch built at each end of the building, looping over it but not yet joined together to make the now famous 'M'.

The First Franchise
In 1954 Ray Kroc was a salesman for a company that made milkshake mixers. He noticed that the McDonald brothers had bought eight of the company's mixers for their restaurant. Believing that, if he could persuade the McDonalds to open more restaurants, he would be able put eight mixers in each of them, he paid them a visit. Again, reports differ about what happened when he talked to the McDonalds. Some believe that he presented the idea of franchises to Dick and Mac, others argue that franchises already existed, and that Kroc merely managed to talk his way into running the franchising operation. Whichever was the case, the end result was the same, and Ray Kroc managed the franchising of the McDonalds' restaurant concept.
The organisation of the franchise was this: anyone who wanted to open a McDonald's restaurant would pay Kroc around a thousand dollars for the honour of doing so, and then 1.9% from the annual takings of the restaurant. He would then pass 0.5% of the takings onto the McDonald brothers, keeping the other 1.4%. Kroc opened his first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955. Whether or not this was the first franchise of the McDonald's restaurant, it was definitely the first opening of the McDonald's Corporation.

The Buy Out
By 1961 Ray Kroc was running the whole show. The only thing the McDonald brothers did was run their one restaurant, and receive their 0.5% from the larger company. The greater expansion of the McDonald's brand was not something they were really interested in. Ray Kroc, on the other hand, was. He wanted to put a McDonald's restaurant in every state in America - which he would eventually do, and much more. He wanted to created a Hamburger University where potential restaurant managers could be taught how to manage a McDonald's restaurant2. He measured every product, weighed all the ingredients, and tasted burgers in every outlet to ensure that precisely the same food was served in every McDonald's restaurant. But Dick and Mac McDonald were happy as they were, and had no concern for the company Kroc had formed from their restaurant. So Kroc offered to buy them out, which he did at a cost of 2.7 million dollars. It is estimated that if the McDonald's had continued to receive their 0.5% it would have been worth around two hundred million dollars by the year 2000.

The Clown
In the early 1960s, Kroc decided that the chain could make more money if it appealed to children, and so the company sponsored a kids' TV show called Bozo the Clown. When that show got cancelled in 1963, the actor that played Bozo, Willard Scott, was hired to appear in three adverts as the McDonald's restaurants new mascot: Ronald McDonald. Though the adverts were a success, Willard was less so, and appeared in no more adverts after the first three. But the character was established, and many other actors have donned the wig since.

The Expansion
The McDonald's chain continued to grow. The Big Mac was created in 1968. Having covered the States, the franchise expanded overseas, with the first restaurant opening in Australia in 1971. The Egg McMuffin (the first breakfast product from McDonald's) was invented in 1973. The three thousandth restaurant of the chain, the first in Britain, was opened in London in 1974. 1979 saw the creation of the Happy Meal, which continues to sell well to children, and adults who want the promotional toys, to this day. A restaurant was opened in Russia, and hailed as an emblem of the new friendship between the two superpowers, in 1990.

The Charity
The McDonald's Corporation's charitable efforts started in 1974, when the first Ronald McDonald House was opened in Philadelphia. It was originally the brainchild of Fred Hill, a member of the Philadelphia Eagles American football team. The house is a place for parents of severely ill children, who have had to travel a distance, to stay while their child is being treated at the nearby hospital. Since then, Ronald McDonald Houses have been established in several countries, and the Ronald McDonald Houses Charity has funded efforts to help children around the globe. It also provides scholarships for under-privileged students from ethnic minorities.

The Problems
The McDonald's chain has not been without its problems. There was the famous McLibel case - the longest running libel case in British legal history. And Jose Bove dismantled a restaurant in France, in order to make a point about globalisation, of which McDonald's has become a prominent symbol. Also the discovery that some beef products were used in the preparation of their french fries, which resulted in the company paying compensation of 10 million dollars to Hindus, sikhs, and vegetarians. There have been various criticisms of the McDonald's Corporation, ranging from the source of their meat, to the treatment of workers in the restaurants, the fact the RMHC scholarships are not available to Native Americans, and some concerns about the healthiness of their food. There is also the occasional accusation that in order to keep all the cattle for the hamburgers, McDonald's has to tear down vast chunks of rain forest; however, McDonald's insist that all their produce is sourced locally, and that there is not a single massive herd that would require the removal of rainforests.

The Future
McDonald's has, so far, weathered all of these problems, and continued to expand into more and more countries. No doubt, barring any major set-backs, the McDonald's Corporation will continue to grow, finding ever more remote locations to place franchises. Only time will tell if they continue to adhere to Ray Kroc's four guiding principles of quality, service, cleanliness and value.

Nokia Brand

The world of parity has hit the mobile phone market just as it has many other technology product categories. The products range from the simple to the complex, but every manufacturer offers, of course, the latest features. Leapfrogging in sales between brands frequently occurs based on design. But overall the market is predictable, with Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson fighting it out at the top and several less successful brands like Samsung, Philips, Siemensand Panasonic trying hard to make inroads into their top competitors' market share. So what makes the difference between the most successful and less successful brands? It certainly is not what product features are offered. How, then, do consumers choose? The answer seems to be what the brand names mean to them.

Nokia Group the Finland-based manufacturer of mobile phones, has been steadily working on its corporate brand name and the management of consumer perceptions over the last few years. Its efforts have paid off, because it is now the number one brand in many markets around the world, effectively dislodging Motorola from that position. The brand has been built using the principles described above, and has been consistently well managed across all markets. Nokia has succeeded in lending personality to its products, without even giving them names. In other words, it has not created any sub-brands but has concentrated on the corporate brand, giving individual products a generic brand personality. Only numeric descriptors are used for the products, which do not even appear on the product themselves. Such is the strength of the corporate brand.
Nokia has suceeded where other big brand names have so far failed, chiefly by putting across the human face technology-taking and dominating the emotional high ground. It has done so in the following way.

Nokia Brand Personality
Nokia has detailed many personality characteristics for its brand, but employees do not have to remember every characteristic. They do, however, have to remember the overall impression of the list of attributes, as you would when thinking about someone you have met. As the focus is on customer relationships, the Nokia personality is like a trusted friend. Building friendship and trust is at the heart of the Nokia brand. And the human dimension created by the brand personality carries over into the positioning strategy for the brand.

Nokia Positioning
When Nokia positions its brand in the crowded mobile phone marketplace, its message must clearly bring together the technology and human side of its offer in a powerful way. The specific message that is conveyed to consumers in every advertisement and market communication (though not necessarily in these words) is "Only Nokia Human Technolgy enables you to get more out of life"
In many cases, this is represented by the tag line, "We call this human technology". This gives consumers a sense of trust and consideration by the company, as though to say that Nokia understand what they want in life, and how it can help. And it knows that technology is really only an enabler so that you-the customer-can enjoy a better life. Nokia thus uses a combination of aspirational, benefit-based, emotional features, and competition-driven positioning strategies. It owns the "human" dimension of mobile communications, leaving its competitors wondering what to own (or how to position themselves), having taken the best position for itself.

Nokia Product Design
Nokia is a great brand because it knows that the essence of the brand needs to be reflected in everything the company does, especially those that impact the consumer. Product design is clearly critical to the success of the brand, but how does Nokia manage to inject personality into product design? The answer is that it gives a great deal of thought to how the user of its phones will experience the brand, and how it can make that experience reflect its brand character. The large display screen, for example, is the "face" of the phone. Nokia designers describe it as the "eye into the soul of the product". The shape of phones is curvy and easy to hold. The faceplates and their different colors can be changed to fit the personality, lifestyle, and mood of the user. The soft key touch pads also add to the feeling of friendliness, expressing the brand personality. Product design focuses on the consumer and his needs, and is summed up in the slogan, "human technology."

Microsoft Brand History

1975–1985: Foundation
Following the launch of the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system. After the demonstration, MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. Gates left Harvard University, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The company's first international office was founded in 1978, in Japan, entitled "ASCII Microsoft" (now called "Microsoft Japan"). In 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington. Steve Ballmer joined the company in 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.

DOS (Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its first real success. In 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, which IBM renamed to PC-DOS. Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, and by aggressively marketing MS-DOS to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft rose from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry.

The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.

1985–1995: OS/2 and Windows
In August 1985, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2. In 1985 Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. In 1986 the company went public with an IPO, with a starting initial offering price of $21.00 and ending at the first day of trading as at US $28.00. In 1987 Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs.
In 1989, Microsoft introduced its flagship office suite, Microsoft Office. This was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. In 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted such new features as streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks. Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows. In the ensuing years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform.
During the transition from MS-DOS to Windows, the success of Microsoft's product Microsoft Office allowed the company to gain ground on application-software competitors, such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. According to The Register, Novell, an owner of WordPerfect for a time, alleged that Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the DOS and Windows kernels and of undocumented Application Programming Interface features to make Office perform better than its competitors. Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a market share far exceeding that of its competitors.
In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, a business operating system with the Windows 3.1 user interface but an entirely different kernel. In 1995 Microsoft released Windows 95, a new version of the company's flagship operating system which featured a completely new user interface, including a novel start button; more than a million copies of Microsoft Windows 95 were sold in the first four days after its release. The company also released its web browser, Internet Explorer, with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack in August 1995 and subsequent Windows versions.

1995–2005: Internet and legal issues
In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. In 1995 it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL. MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services.

The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC. Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers. Later in 1997 Internet Explorer 4.0 was released for both Mac OS and Windows, marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from rival Netscape. In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.
The year 1998 was significant in Microsoft's history, with Bill Gates appointing Steve Ballmer as president of Microsoft but remaining as Chair and CEO himself. The company released Windows 98, an update to Windows 95 that incorporated a number of Internet-focused features and support for new types of devices. In 2000 a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft, calling the company an "abusive monopoly" and forcing the company to split into two separate units. Part of this ruling was later overturned by a federal appeals court, and eventually settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.
In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, the first version that encompassed the features of both its business and home product lines. XP introduced a new graphical user interface, the first such change since Windows 95. Later, with the release of the Xbox Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft encountered more turmoil in March 2004 when antitrust legal action was brought against it by the European Union for abusing its market dominance (see European Union Microsoft antitrust case), eventually resulting in a judgement to produce new versions of its Windows XP platform—called Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N— that did not include its Windows Media Player.

2006–present: Vista and other transitions
In 2006 Bill Gates announced a two year transition period from his role as Chief Software Architect, which would be taken by Ray Ozzie, and planned to remain the company's chairman, head of the Board of Directors and act as an adviser on key projects. As of December 2007, Windows Vista, released in January 2007, is Microsoft's latest operating system. Microsoft Office 2007 was released at the same time; its "Ribbon" user interface is a significant departure from its predecessors. On 1st February, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase the fully diluted outstanding shares of Yahoo for up to $44.6 billion, though this offer was rejected 10 days later.