The Tanning of America (36 page)

For the team to produce the song that was going to make or break the strategy, we went with the Neptunes—a.k.a. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo—who had already produced tracks for Justin on his debut album. Music being the great equalizer that it is, the team was likewise tan: Timberlake, a white southerner now known for his soulful sound; Williams, African-American, a hip-hop artist, writer, designer, and producer; and Hugo, a Filipino-American who is a saxophonist, pianist, and guitarist. Both Williams and Hugo had been members of the funk/rock band known as NERD. A tasty recipe, I'd say.

In August 2003, the history-making collaboration was released by Jive Records and it shot up the charts instantly, propelled by an unforgettable five-note song mnemonic:

DDB Germany, a phenomenal advertising firm, was responsible for coming up with the overall concept and the inimitable slogan while I handled the music part of the campaign. Drawing from my background in the record business, I can attest to the fact that no stone was left unturned in the relentless pursuit of airplay—on urban, rock, and Top 40 radio platforms. As the song grew in popularity, so too did the adoption of the catch-phrase “I'm lovin' it.”

Even before we went to the next phase of the marketing, where the reverse engineering would hopefully do its magic, it was astonishing in the best of all ways to hear the saying come up in common everyday exchanges—an expression of approval, of enjoyment, an answer to the question of how you felt about something that raised your vibrational, emotional status.

Adding to the appeal was the music video, which used camera work done in a “run and gun” guerilla style of shooting, capturing a documentary feeling with footage of real reactions from fans as they saw Justin Timberlake, an international superstar, just walking the streets of New York. Even before the video made its premiere on MTV's
Total Request Live,
the buzz began on the Internet—not only that this was cool footage but also, breaking news, that there was a possibility, according to rumors, that the song and video would be the next marketing campaign for McDonald's.

Did this bring everything to a grinding halt? Not at all. The story dominated entertainment news. The syndicated television show
Access Hollywood
confirmed the rumors hours before the premiere and got exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the video. How were we liking that? We were lovin' it! Once the video debuted, it shot up the chart on MTV, eventually peaking at number two on
Total Request Live
. In 2003 the cultural connection with the MTV audience was a marketing coup. Not only were youths receiving McDonald's new message, they were the ones propelling it forward!

Within days of the video release, McDonald's made two global announcements. First and foremost, the brand would be the presenting sponsor for Justin Timberlake's European tour, called “Justified and Lovin' It.” Additionally, the company officially announced that it had indeed entered into a partnership with Timberlake to use the title of his song as McDonald's new worldwide brand tagline. Because this was the first global campaign in the fifty-year history of McDonald's, the news was announced and covered in most of the 118 countries where the brand does business. The media attention was beyond anything we could have dreamed possible.

With the television advertising that followed, another team came in to do the spots that maintained the theme of mind-set over product, showing vignettes that appealed to hipper families and youthful adult consumers. No focus on burgers, we were selling lifestyles—just different faces and attitudes. Between the song, the video, and the follow-up commercials, a gathering of community was created that spoke to over forty-seven million customers around the world—speaking different languages and living in different environments. The tanning effect had gone global with the idea of a shared mental complexion, a like-mindedness that celebrated differences and connection. All had the same aspirations. The world was all hip and cool. The world was many colors, one mind-set. And, of course, we all loved McDonald's.

Continuing the momentum, McDonald's sent out street teams to distribute fun branded merchandise with Timberlake's name and their own—showing up in heavily trafficked neighborhoods of the company's largest ten markets: the United States, Brazil, China, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

McDonald's used street teams to extend the message and maintain an ongoing conversation with its customers, in a manner that was authentic to consumers. Justin Timberlake more than did his part, making key appearances at events and at select McDonald's restaurants. He walked the fine line of coming off cool and real, yet at the same time not offending or harming McDonald's investor base or its reputation.

The “I'm Lovin' It” lifestyle campaign had broken so many rules and had been so successful that I'm sure there were many at McDonald's who doubted if it could ever be topped. When they approached Translation in 2004 about how they could recreate the excitement of Justin Timberlake's launch, we switched the approach and aligned the brand with Destiny's Child—with Beyoncé Knowles, then the lead singer of the three-girl group that had already sold forty million records worldwide and were seen as iconic in the worlds of entertainment, fashion, and music.

McDonald's thus became the sponsor of Destiny's Child's upcoming worldwide tour, which was aptly entitled “Destiny Fulfilled and Lovin' It.” The group was enlisted to serve as the global ambassadors of McDonald's annual fund-raiser, World Children's Day. When the album,
Destiny Fulfilled,
was released in November 2004, there had been rumors that it would be the trio's final release and fans rushed to purchase it; eventually six million copies were sold worldwide. With rave reviews as well, by the time that the tour started in the spring of 2005, the concert tickets were among the most coveted in recent years.

The “I'm Lovin' It” lifestyle and mind-set, alive and well at this writing, secured McDonald's position as a brand and industry leader—because executives were brave enough to lead with ethnic insights and embrace the rich psychographics of a tanner America. The inclusive thinking allowed urban youth culture to come back to the cool that had been there from the start, and McDonald's to offer new menu choices, with more diverse flavors and healthier options (smoothies, salads, snack wraps), while keeping core consumers feeling better about healthy, more active lifestyles for themselves and their children.

Some of these changes came about, rightfully so, in response to the negative reports from health organizations about rampant youth obesity plus widespread criticism of fast food in general and McDonald's in particular, especially with the films
Super Size Me
(2004) and
Food, Inc.
(2008). Given those dynamics, we weren't sure what kind of fiscal read there would be to show how effective the marketing had been for the “I'm Lovin' It” campaign. Lo and behold, in 2008 McDonald's stock hit $67 a share, a 198 percent improvement from the $22.45 that it was trading at five years earlier.

Meanwhile, one of the ongoing changes being discussed that was near and dear to my heart came from the stories that I heard when we interviewed McDonald's employees who lived in urban neighborhoods. I was convinced that if the brand really wanted to align itself meaningfully to the lives of millennials and remain aspirational, they had to do something about the outdated, conservative uniforms. Kids told me in interview after interview that the outfits were an embarrassment. They were so ashamed, in fact, they would change out of their uniform to walk home. No one wanted to be seen in their neighborhood in clothes like that—for fear of being teased, bullied, or worse. Addressing the dire issue, I asked executives, “Why not dress employees in the kind of apparel that would make them proud to come to work and that would appeal to the consumers we're trying to attract?” When I presented recommendations of people to design the new uniforms, I showed sketches from the same creative designers behind the Sean John clothing line and Russell Simmons's Phat Farm apparel label.

As the McDonald's executives were debating, the media predicted that Translation had really pushed the envelope too far this time. The July 4, 2005, issue of
Advertising Age
had a Ronald McDonald dressed in sweat pants, with a baseball cap turned sideways and a huge gold dollar sign hanging around his neck. The headline read: PHAT FEEDER DOWN WITH DIDDY.

And in the nationally syndicated cartoon
The Boondocks,
cartoonist Aaron McGruder drew his two main characters, Huey and Riley, engaged in the following exchange:

Hey, you know that you're working in the business of culture when you start becoming noticed by culture. My behind-the-scenes cover was clearly blown.

And pretty soon the uniforms were updated. These experiences validated what I knew about the scope and power—and pitfalls—of tanning that had proven itself to the world. Cool is . . . getting to say,
Yeah, we have arrived
.

Fully activated, feeling invincible, the millennial generation with the shared mental complexion was also ready for a departure—to flex its muscle not just in the marketplace but in the voting booth.

I
n May 2007 a group of South Bronx residents, concerned about the fact that rents were being raised in their poorly maintained hundred-unit building, made a startling discovery. Thanks to various search engines they'd been using to learn more about the company that owned the building—and its predatory practices—every time one of them plugged in their address, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, countless hits referred to the building as “the birthplace of hip-hop.” Until they decided to reach out for help from affordable-housing advocates and do the research, none of them would have had any idea that right there in their very own rec room, still in the building—although unusable because of needed repairs—DJ Kool Herc, a.k.a. Clive Campbell, had started the party that turned into a global phenomenon.

Advocates and residents then teamed up to try to make the building a national landmark in the hopes of gaining attention from city officials as well as from prominent hip-hop figures. At issue in 2007 was the fear that the owners of the building—who had opted out of a city-wide program that helped subsidize rent-controlled apartments for low-income families—would let conditions get worse and then sell to the highest bidder, who, in turn, would fix up the building but kick out tenants who couldn't afford the exorbitantly higher rents. Actually, the following year, the building was sold and, true to the pattern, living conditions worsened. There were complaints of rats and roaches everywhere, floorboards missing, and unpassable stairwells. In spite of all the attention, progress was slow. But then, finally, in September 2010, through the efforts of city, state, and federal housing authorities, it was announced that the building would be purchased and refurbished as the centerpiece of a new partnership between public and private concerns to provide decent, affordable housing to poor and middle-income families across the five boroughs of New York City.

Early in the coverage of this story, I had been shocked that a cultural landmark, one that had played such an important role in many of our lives, could have been so easily overlooked and forgotten. At the same time, when word of the tenants' plight surfaced in 2007, and
The New York Times
and other media were reporting about hip-hop as an institution with a vibrant, influential history, it was uplifting to see how many people felt connected and proud to belong to the diverse worldwide congregation. The idea that our culture even had its own monument, despite its disrepair, was a clarion call to everyone and anyone who had aligned with the movement at any time in their lives, past or present. Suddenly, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue—and the August night in 1973 when the first party rocked the building—became a touchstone for just how far the diverse global hip-hop community had come.

I also learned something very interesting when I was reading the stories that came out in these recent years. While I knew that Cindy Campbell (Herc's sister) had been involved in helping organize and market the first house party, I did not know the real reason that she—not her brother—came up with the idea. As Cindy told
The New York Times
in 2007, the venture was something she “dreamed up as a way for her to get some extra money for back-to-school clothes.” But not just to look cool and fit in. Cindy Campbell explained, “I didn't want to go to Fordham Road to buy clothes because you'd go to school and see everybody with the same thing on.... I wanted to go to Delancey Street and get something unusual.”

That one comment speaks volumes about why the music that came out of those parties mattered so much, why it had practical relevance in the lives of the teens who were part of making it happen. Cindy Campbell didn't want to stay put. She wanted the means to challenge the assigned demographics and get down to lower Manhattan.

Today that might not sound so revolutionary. But almost forty years ago, it was definitely going against the grain. It's a reminder that, as much as aspiration drives culture, it is oppression that breeds resourcefulness—which in turn breeds empowerment, economic, social, and political.