McDonald's Arch Deluxe and It's (Unfair?) Fall From Grace

Some of the most successful and recognizable brands in the world are also the ones that have experienced some of the most monumental product failures in modern consumer history. For Coca-Cola it was their New Coke product launched in 1985, for Pepsico it was their Crystal Pepsi clear cola product that they launched in 1992, and for Microsoft it was a few products, perhaps most notably the Zune music player that flopped in 2006. But for McDonald's, arguably the world's most recognizable fast food brand, one of the company's most epic product failures was the Arch Deluxe burger.

McDonald's ventured into new product territory by creating the Arch Deluxe and marketing it as the “burger with the grown-up taste”. Although McDonald's began its fast food empire in the 1950s as a family-oriented restaurant, over the years it has developed an image that has largely been associated with children and food products that are more geared toward younger consumers thanks in large part to Ronald McDonald, the Hamburgler, Grimace, and other corporate mascots. In an effort to revamp the company's image and attract a more adult segment of the market, the Arch Deluxe was conceived and branded with a marketing strategy that was rife with images of young people rejecting the burger because of its more ‘sophisticated' appeal.

In theory it sounds like a home run; the ideal way to balance out the company's target demographic and give consumers the idea that McDonald's caters as much to the more refined palate as it does to those of our children. The problem, however, was that McDonald's had taken itself out of its own element because consumers didn't go to their restaurants for sophistication and refinement. They go for other reasons, the chief among them being convenience and a big part of that convenience, at least as it pertains to a place like McDonald's, is knowing what to expect from the customer experience.

Indeed, McDonald's has different product offerings in different markets around the world based on cultural preferences but by and large McDonald's is McDonald's no matter where you go on the planet. That being the case, when consumers go there to eat, the vast majority already know what they're going to order before they get there. Accordingly, they're not interested in being inundated with countless variations of what essentially amounts to a simple hamburger. The Arch Deluxe was also hyped by the company's marketing team for its taste which surprisingly compounded the problem. Many saw it as the wrong approach to take to draw in consumers because it was seen as McDonald's trying to be something it's not – a culinary luxury that appeals to food connoisseurs. That may not have been the intent, but that was certainly the perception.

Many marketing experts believe that all of this erroneous marketing and product hype on the part of McDonald's in regard to the Arch Deluxe points to a glaring lack of connection with consumers as well as a lag in the market. In McDonalds' defense, however, the Arch Deluxe went through extensive market testing and research before being launched and the results showed that consumers were interested in the product which of course led to McDonald's greenlighting its release. Unfortunately, though, the vast majority of consumers apparently didn't fit the test market profile and the product has gone down in history as one of the most embarrassing failures in McDonald's history.