Wil Anderson just made this bold claim on the Gruen Transfer:
“The McDonalds Golden Arches are now more recognisable than the Christian Cross.”
True or false?
It kind of fails to take into account the historical brand recognition and needs to be more specifically defined.
A little bit of googling suggests that this was either a piece of corporate indoctrination fostered by McDonalds that has now become fact – or that there is an obscure survey that I can’t find from the late 90s conducted in Australia…
Your thoughts?
Comments
Dunno if it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the ‘brand recognition’ is better. The Arches instantly communicates ‘cheap stuff to put in your mouth’, but I reckon most Aussies don’t have a clue what the symbol of the cross represents.
What is scary to me is how early brand recognition starts. My two-year-old knows that the golden arches means ‘chippies’ (or coffee, depending on what we’ve been there for most recently), and he recognises maybe 30 other logos. Some he knows the actual store and what they sell, others he just has a general idea – virgin means airport, ANZ and Bank of Queensland both mean bank.
He recognises a cross as ‘church’. If I push him, he might be able to tell me Jesus died on the cross, but only if there is some sort of context. Which, I agree with Daniel, is probably better than a lot of Australians could tell you.
The brand association I was looking for was more “Cross=Christianity” than “cross = redemptive tool”… but I take your points on board.
Also, Stuss you hit a number of words that my spam filter doesn’t like which explains the delay between your posting and this appearing.