Last month, when angry Muslims flame-broiled Ronald McDonald in the streets of Pakistan, it was just business as usual for the "Chief Happiness Officer" of the world's largest fast-food chain. Whether it's eco-warriors drowning him in sewage in China or cultural protectionists beheading him in France, it's hard out there for a burger pimp.
In his native land, Ronald's life is no less perilous. Two weeks ago in Norfolk, Virginia, someone splattered him with paint and ripped off his arm. Why? Who knows? Perhaps it was done in the name of more humane slaughter-plant conditions. Or maybe someone out there simply has a grudge against dorky, middle-aged virgins who dress like a mime with a Raggedy Ann fetish.
It's the latter possibility that most concerns Ronald's bosses: When the whole world aspires to coolness, the lack of it is the one unpardonable sin. To make Ronald more hip, McDonald's has created commercials that employ a quirkier, more humorous tone than its typical marketing efforts. In one, Bigfoot sits next to a statue of Ronald and mimics his posture. In another, a woman tells him he's gone "a little too crazy with the sunscreen." This, a McDonald's exec told Reuters, will "widen the berth of [Ronald's] coolness."
Right now, of course, only a 3-year-old can fit through that berth. In the old days, that wasn't a liability—3-year-olds drove fast-food purchasing decisions. Now, however, sedating your toddler with beef tallow is no longer viewed as an appropriate parenting technique. In addition, boomers are too obsessed with their LDL counts to regularly patronize McDonald's. That makes teens and twentysomethings today's target customers, and few of them see the coolness inherent in Ronald's droopy yellow overalls.
Indeed, now that pretty much everyone accepts that fast food is akin to booze or cigarettes, a choose-your-poison glibness is the smart alternative to Ronald's obsolescent sincerity and corporate cheerleading. His savviest competitors recognize this fact. For more than a decade now, Jack in the Box's Jack has been playing the disaffected corporate hipster. Poker-faced, cynical and irreverent, he's the David Letterman of burger mascots; he wears his shallowness and self-absorption well.
The King, introduced by Burger King in 2004, is Jack with a twist. The massive, plastic cranium grafted onto a human body's the same, but while Jack is a chatterbox, the King is celebrity wallpaper in the tradition of Andy Warhol, showing up everywhere, rocking his oversized Flavor Flav medallion and dimestore crown, never sabotaging his spectacular superficiality with so much as a single word. According to the ad agency that created him, he's the "cool uncle ... who tells you how things really are and lets you get away with a little bit more than your mom and dad do."
Meanwhile, Jack is apparently your cool uncle's cool uncle. In his most recent spot, he guides a giggly stoner through a late-night drive-in purchase, helpfully advising him to buy 30 tacos. Not to be outdone, the King's latest includes faux-paparazzi imagery of him and B-list C-cup girl Brooke Burke trying to enjoy a few private moments while still making sure their good sides are showing. On the one hand, this doesn't seem quite as bold as Jack's tacit approval of heavy marijuana usage. On the other hand, since the point here is to make the King seem as vacuous and contemptible as Paris, maybe it is.
Needless to say, Ronald will never venture into such edgy territory, even in the pursuit of coolness. This, alas, is his fatal flaw. Jack and the King are happy just to show you a good time; Ronald wants to be good. Or, more precisely, Ronald wants you to believe he and the company he represents are good, even though that's not always the case. What would happen if he abandoned the Mother Teresa pose and acted a bit more like Jack or the King, thus admitting that, yes, he and McDonald's aren't always completely virtuous, completely heartwarming, completely wholesome? Forget about cool—at least he wouldn't seem quite so evil.