McDonalds Gives Free Coffee – And Leads
McDonalds does things the McDonalds way – and gets lots of attention in the process.
See this wonderful and creative method that it used to draw attention to its stores, that appealed to a huge number of its prospects. It looks almost magical – and you can certainly learn a thing or two from it:
McDonalds does things the McDonalds way again, but this time it gets lots of attention for its “competitor”, the very entity it is trying to snuff out. Its “competitor” is McCurry:
McCurry’s owner is Suppiah (see video image above).
He’s one of my first students in my very first Boot Camp on Internet Business and Internet Marketing way back in 1999 (not many people even know about this Boot Camp). Shows you how long I’ve been doing Internet Businesses, which is way before most people – but there’s a more important point coming up.
The short of it all – McDonalds claimed that McCurry had no right to the “Mc” prefix as it’s part of the “McDonalds” trademark. Malaysia’s High Court agreed. McCurry appealed to the Court of Appeal, which reversed that decision. McDonalds appealed to the Federal Court, which upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision.
In short, McCurry took on the might of McDonalds, and won. And in the process, generated what Suppiah himself estimated is about $1 BILLION worth of positive publicity worldwide, for its McCurry brand. People all over the world who have never heard of McCurry, took notice and now know about McCurry.
All the media outlets in the world picked this story up, including CNN and major TV stations:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/08/mcdonalds.mccurry.legal.malaysia/index.html
(I was featured on CNN too, for my Blindfold Drive event – but Suppiah’s event has a bigger impact since a familiar corporate giant is involved.)
Suppiah and I actually discussed his stand against McDonalds about 8 or 9 years ago, when Suppiah started his McCurry restaurant. How do you deal with McDonalds’ might and intention to own the “Mc” prefix – which really isn’t for it to own?
“McCurry” is an actual Scottish surname, although in Suppiah’s case, it’s an abbreviation for “Malaysian Curry Chicken”. If McDonalds were allowed to own the “Mc” name – it means that no other business can use a “Mc” as part of its name.
Is that fair? No, not in our minds. Is that legal? This is for the courts to decide but our guts (you and I) tell us that the courts should decide against McDonalds – although our guts are really different from what the law might be.
Note that some courts in some jurisdictions have ruled in favor of McDonalds when some businesses tried to use “Mc” as part of their business name, even if that’s their actual name – but this isn’t a clear cut case for sure and different jurisdictions will have different judges sitting to decide on the issue.
Also McDonalds wasn’t suing McCurry for “passing off” which is where McCurry was trying to mislead the public into thinking it’s part of the McDonalds chain of restaurants, when McCurry clearly made no attempt to do so as it doesn’t offer any food that remotely resembles McDonalds’, nor did it follow McDonalds’ theme, colors or have a Ronaldo McCurry as its mascot.
And since “McCurry” the name clearly isn’t “McDonalds” the name either, this left McDonalds with just the “Mc” prefix that it tried to claim was part of its trademark which couldn’t be used by other businesses. It didn’t have the strongest case but it either could let things be – or take a chance to strengthen itself even more with a potential victory in the courts.
It chose the latter and lost.
While this loss isn’t going to affect McDonalds’ business much, it has the opposite effect on McCurry – which is the underdog going against an 800 pound gorilla. The media love such stories – and painted the town (or the planet) red with it – because the masses love such stories too.
This is business strategy executed at the highest level – and Suppiah truly deserves his victory for he had nothing to fear since he really didn’t do anything wrong. McDonalds started the “fight”. It was a calculated move on their part that simply backfired on them.
But how many other people would have given in just because a corporate giant threatened them with a lawsuit – even though the corporation may not have a solid case to begin with?
You can be sure there are corporations using lawsuits as a weapon to stifle competition which is in effect pitting the amount of money they have against the poor, small businesses who simply can’t afford to defend themselves in court.
This anti-competitive strategy being practiced by giant corporations isn’t discussed much but it’s happening.
But there’s another 800-pound gorilla story where you get a giant corporation to be on your side which provides BOTH of you with what both of you want.
That 800-pound gorilla is Google.
You want FREE, NEVER-ENDING, FRESH and HIGHLY-TARGETED Leads or Prospects for your businesses, websites or offers. Google wants their users to have the best experience in finding what they’re looking for.
It’s a match made in heaven.
Google will give you all the FREE, FRESH, NEVER-ENDING and HIGHLY-TARGETED leads you want – if you will just give it what it wants.
My Google Magic System shows you EXACTLY how to give Google what Google wants with the LEAST amount of effort on your part. In fact, you don’t have to life a finger to do anything!
I used to dread tackling Google because while the work to do it wasn’t difficult, it was tedious, repetitious and mind-numbing. This is so even if you used software or people to do the work for you because if it’s tedious, repetitious and mind-numbing, the people you hire won’t be able to do the work for long.
I’ve solved the above problems in more ways than one. And I’m proud to be showing it off to you so that you can see for yourself how doable everything really is, right now.
Note that Google can get you THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of free visitors for MONTHS, even YEARS on end, and you’re going to know how this is done in my FREE talk below. Register for it and be blown away by how easy it can be – NOW!
If you’re in Singapore, I’ll be there next Monday, Sept 28th. Click below to register for your free seats in Singapore:
Cheers!
Sen Ze
