What do you do when you capture lightning in a bottle? When you have such a great idea, you’re not quite sure what to do with it, how fast to move, or whether it really will be the success you think it will be?

In my 32 years at McDonald’s, I saw a lot of great concepts and a few not so great. What happened to some of these as we tried to take full advantage of them, when we really had little idea what we were doing? Let’s take a look at both marketing and new products, particular areas I was involved in.

The first time I saw Ronald was in a 1965 commercial introducing him to kids. He had a drink tray for a hat, a drink cup for a nose, and a mouth bigger than Cleveland. And the photography was right out of The Night of the Living Dead. Now, this guy is supposed to appeal to kids?

But he did. It might have taken until 1972 and the advent of McDonaldland to really create the character, but we had a clown by the tail. It took a lot of hard work to define who the character was, how he was supposed to act toward kids, and his role in the total scheme of selling hamburgers. The first Ronald McDonald training clown and I wrote the manual for how to be Ronald on the back porch of his house. Called “Ronald and How,” it endured for decades as the ultimate course on Ronald. He was not to sell to kids; he was to be a kid’s friend, not an adult; and he was to personify fun. We worked really hard to make sure all the Ronalds around the world looked and acted the same, and that’s not easy when you have a six-foot Swede and a somewhat shorter Japanese playing the same part in the same wig and makeup. But we knew we had a winner.

 

Big ideas have been shaped by need as well as opportunity. Take the Happy Meal. We noticed that moms were buying the kids fries and a drink or a hamburger and a drink, but rarely all three together. Now, we didn’t want to oversell to little kids, but there had to be a way to turn this into a meal rather than a snack. What about a kids meal?

But not just any kids meal, it has to be the McDonald’s way. So a cute cardboard box with games and puzzles, a little packet of McDonaldland cookies, and a Ronald toy later, we had an idea. Package everything with a hamburger, small fries, and a small drink and we have the world’s first Happy Meal. We tried it in St. Louis to substantial success, and the rest is history.

I am collecting suggestions to make tasty food healthier. Do you hide flax seed in your muffins? Do you puree vegetables into your stews to hide them from your kids? Let's swap secrets to healthier cooking!