McDonald’s new VP of marketing outlines his vision

Having lead the development of some of McDonald’s highest performing campaigns in the UK as marketing director, Alistair Macrow now takes over the reins from Jill McDonald as vice president of McDonald’s UK marketing.

Here he outlines seven pointers he will follow in his new role to build the McDonald’s business and its brand.

– Continue to put the customer at the centre of everything we do and remember the role we play in their lives. Our approach has to be grounded, realistic and honest, and should always be fun.

– It’s important that we are always in touch with our customers and we must always evolve to recognise how customers are changing but our pace of change must match our customers. Moving too fast will see us lose relevance just as much as moving too slow.

– Listening to our customers is critical, we need to understand the risks that could undermine enjoyment of our brand and address them.

– I’m passionate about ensuring every communication adds value to the brand. We must always ask ourselves not just how will this contact with customers drive our business, but also how will it drive our brand.

– Never underestimate the importance of execution. More strategies are likely fail due to a lack of focus on execution than strategic weakness. In a business with 1,200 restaurants, over 80,000 people and serving 2.5m customers a day, executional detail is quickly amplified and can cause the best plan to fail.

– The experience which matters to our customers is the one that happens at our restaurants. Opinions of the brand will be formed most strongly when our customers step through the door or drive through the drive thru lane – the decor, the cleanliness, the length of the queue, the friendliness of the greeting and the quality of the food. All marketing activity needs to remember and support this.

– As a marketing leader, I believe my most important job is to secure the future of our business by developing the talent in our people. It’s important to empower them to employ their talents, support them to realise their potential, encourage them to take managed risk and trust them to deliver.

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