Page 178 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

and we wanted them to be thinking about us all the time. We rec-
ognized that they worked with other clients—that’s life in the
agency business—but we know by giving them the audience and
giving them the open evaluation and when we would review cre-
ative, it was a matter of literally going around the room and get-
ting comments from everybody. Then, of course, in the end it
would come down [to] one person . . . eventually [having] to
make that decision. And that’s how they were judged.”
As Paul pointed out to me, if a piece of work was not accepted,
the creatives understood why. “There was no mystery,” Paul said.
“They knew exactly what we liked, what we disliked, and the
changes that needed to be made.” The process included further
revisions, and open communications that fostered the back and
forth that evolved into some of McDonald’s best campaigns. “It
was the openness that they always felt they had, and I knew from
dealing with creatives over here that was something that they just
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didn’t experience in a lot of other companies,” Paul said.
And the branding didn’t stop with the jazzy ad campaigns, as
CEO Jim Skinner shared with me: “Everything that’s internal
is external. Everything is messaging. . . . Messaging about the
brand on a physical basis, you drive onto our lot, you drive onto
our brand.”

The Importance of Back and Forth
In the uniqueness of the three-legged-stool system, communication
was critical. But that back and forth meant more than just easy
access to stakeholders. And it also meant more than listening. It
also meant compromise. These traits, along with teamwork and
collaboration were the hallmarks of the three-legged-stool princi-
ple. It was predicated on all three of its members having input; it
forced collaboration, and its by-product was compromise. “There
is input from all parties involved to try and make a collective good