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The McDonald’s logo is one that probably 90% of the world is familiar with. (I just made that number up – call it an “alternative fact” – but it sounds about right.)
Those golden arches are a beacon signalling to one and all, “French fries… you need French fries.”
However, they were almost banished by the company back in the 1960’s, which may have forever changed the fast food landscape as we know it.
According to the BBC…
The M stands for McDonald’s, but the rounded m represents mummy’s mammaries, acccording the design consultant and psychologist Louis Cheskin. In the 1960’s McDonald’s was prepared to abandon this logo, but Cheskin successfully urged the company to maintain this branding with its Freudian symbolism of a pair of nourishing breasts.
That’s right, if it weren’t for a psychologist pointing out to McDonald’s that their logo looked like a pair of boobs, it might have disappeared forever.
No joke. They continue…
This may seem funny, but it is no laughing matter to the industrial psychologists and marketing consultants who are paid millions to find new ways to seduce us into buying by manipulating our unconscious desires.
The work of “hidden persuaders” in the psychology of marketing has been going on since the 1920s. Nowadays, there are companies who even hypnotise focus groups of consumers to reach their innermost associations.
Market research has found that children can recognize a brand logo before they can recognise their own name.
So there you have it. Now the next time you (and for me, probably forever) see those golden arches you will think of boobs.
You’re welcome.
McDonald’s image: Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock, Inc.