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April 27, 2006 ADVERTISING......

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April 27, 2006
/ ADVERTISING
DOW JONES REPRINTS
McDonald's Chic:
Vintage T-Shirts Are Sizzling
Word-of-Mouth Campaign
From DIC Entertainment
Is Aimed at Young Women
By SUZANNE VRANICA
April 27, 2006;PageB2
One of the hippest designs showing up on must-have fashion lists for spring doesn't come from Prada or Marc Jacobs. Instead, it is a line of vintage T-shirts emblazoned with a McDonald's logo.
That's right. The fast-food chain long associated with fatty foods and the decidedly nerdy Ronald McDonald is suddenly hot with young hipsters. A recent issue of Ellegirl magazine features McDonald's T-shirts on its "HotPotato" list of must-have items. The April issue of In Touch magazine features a photo of "Sopranos" star Jamie-Lynn Sigler wearing a "Big Mac Attack" T-shirt.
McDonald's transformation into a cool fashion statement was no accident. It is the result of a word-of-mouth marketing campaign started last year to boost the burger chain's image among fashion-conscious young people. As part of the effort, McDonald's -- which spent $770 million on ad time and space in the U.S. last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence -- for the first time licensed use of its old ad slogans and ad characters on merchandise.
Vintage-style McDonald's T-shirts, which retail for about $55, are on display at some trendy California boutiques.
To design the campaign, McDonald's hired DIC Entertainment Corp., an entertainment-licensing company that has been successful at reviving nostalgia brands such as Strawberry Shortcake. The two chose vintage T-shirts, currently a hot fashion item, as their first licensed product. The shirts, which retail for about $55, include the chain's old ad characters, such as Mayor McCheese and Grimace, and ad slogans, such as "You Deserve a Break Today."
To get the word out to the cool crowd, McDonald's set up a big display in February at Lisa Kline, a trendy Los Angeles boutique. The company also sold the shirts at Intuition, another well-known L.A. store. The two stores are known for their celebrity clientele.
The campaign isn't the first time McDonald's has tapped into the celebrity market to appeal to teens. In recent years, it has used pop stars such as Justin Timberlake and R&B group Destiny's Child in ads.
"It's just trying to find more-authentic ways to connect with this crowd," says Mary Dillon, McDonald's global chief marketing officer. "This is a consumer that doesn't want to be marketed to."
The latest campaign is meant to appeal to young women as well as young men. For decades, younger females have been a "tough sell for any fast-food chains because, in general, they had an ad image of being bad food, fried and full of calories," says Bob Sandelman, chief executive officer of Sandelman & Associates, a San Clemente, Calif., market-research firm that tracks consumer trends for the restaurant industry.
That has begun to change as McDonald's, like other fast-food chains, has begun to offer healthier fare, amid concerns about growing obesity in the U.S. Last year, the frequency of women age 16 to 24 purchasing fast-food fare jumped 17.5%, according to a recent survey of 2,400 fast-food customers by Sandelman. The survey found that young women and men made the same number of fast-food purchases -- 20.1 -- a month.
Paying closer attention to the young women can pay dividends once those women have children. "If they can bring these young women in before they have kids, they are more likely to go there as moms," Mr. Sandelman adds.
McDonald's won't say how many shirts it has sold but demand was so strong that the manufacturer was "caught off guard and had to make more T-shirts," says Nancy Fowler, senior vice president of business development at DIC. The T-shirt program is expected to be rolled out overseas by next year.
Write to Suzanne Vranica at 1
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