Apparently the free coffee is not boosting McDonald’s breakfast menu sales, but that’s probably OK by maidanglao.  Getting the word out is worthwhile.  They’ve been supporting the free coffee campaign with TV ads that note the new coffee product line.

I live in downtown Shanghai, and it’s a common to see pedestrians tenderly gripping a cup of Starbucks, green queen logo facing outwards.  You never see someone nursing a McD coffee like this.  Will be interesting to see if McD’s can break thru the shallow snob barrier.

Less than a year ago, one of the economic concerns to me in Shanghai was rapid appreciation of the RMB and inflation.  Now it seems unlikely that the RMB will gain anything – if it doesn’t actually give up some gains its made since 2005 – and deflation may be on its way?  The Coffee Bean chain in Shanghai is peddling its mugs with a promotion of getting a free “cuppa” with the purchase, and the bilingual encouragement of “Don’t let the economy get you down! 不要让经济风暴打垮你”, and bars like the Mexican Adobo offering a daily Economic Recession Happy Hour, with beers for 5 yuan and hard liquor for 7.

A classic moment today at my local McDonald’s: A young girl was eating an early lunch at about 11:30 am with an older guy, probably her grandfather. Gramps wasn’t hungry, but he was definitely thirsty, as he took several large swigs from his bottle of Red Star erguotou (in the classic green flask). He even gave her the drunken finger-point, wagging it in front of her face as he loudly passed along some sage advice. Alas, I didn’t bring my camera.

Merchandising note: The Olympics theme has already been pushed out in favor of a series of ads and toys for Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

This fantastic option is essentially negated by the lack of coffee refills outside of breakfast hours–which, by the way, last until 11am, instead of 10am as is standard on the mainland.

The coffee is decent, but with so many good coffee shops around, it tastes relatively worse. It is nice to get real half-and-half with one’s coffee, though, instead of the faux half-and-half substitute provided in the mainland.

The sausage here tastes much stronger and better than the sausage patties used in the rest of China. I suppose it’s imported from the U.S., while the China meat is processed domestically.

Will try the pancakes soon….

True to our name, Truth from Facts weighs in on the Coke controversy sweeping the Chinese blogs.

Background and timeline (from this source):

• 2003: Coca-Cola produced this poster advertisement in 2003 and used it in Germany. The poster depicts 3 monks riding a roller coaster. The people behind them are not dressed in monk attire.
• April 8, 2008 – a Coca-Cola spokesperson said it regretted if anyone felt offense to the poster campaign of 2003 depicting the monks, and that Coca-Cola had no bad intentions, and that the poster in the store window had been removed.
• April 9, 2008: Foreign media reports that this poster at a train station in Germany had ticked off Chinese ‘netizens’. The caption “make it real” was interpreted by some to mean “make Tibetan independence come true”.
• April 9, 2008: Coca-Cola (China) explained that the poster had no political overtones whatsoever, and that it had been removed that day.
• April 10, 2008: Coca-Cola (China) issued a formal statement explaining that the poster was one in a series of about a dozen “Make it Real” advertising designs, in which each design depicted a different group of people in a different setting. The statement explained that the slogan means 勇于尝试 in Chinese, and the intent of the slogan was to “encourage people to try new things and expereience life’s happiness”. The statement went on to note that the advertisement had no political overtones and was not meant to support Tibetan independence whatsoever. It also pointed out that Coca-Cola serves customers in over 200 countries with very different cultures, religions and histories.

Great work by Coca-Cola’s PR department to deal with the issues quickly and thoroughly. It’s a 6 year old ad campaign. It was designed to inspire people to have fun. And I’d say those monks looked like they were enthralled. Not sure I’d go buy a can of coke because of it, but this should settle the issue, but wait…NO, WE HAVE TO BOYCOTT COCA-COLA.

A baidu search shows there are hundreds of webpages carrying this statement by Coca-Cola. Some are objectively delivering the facts, but many are bashing the company as supporting Tibet.

Here is an online posting from a self-described responsible voice who has worked in the marketing department of a foreign company for many years (watch out, he’s about to bite the proverbial hand that feeds…). He’s responding to Coca-Cola’s statement. Summarizing his comments:

1. No company like Coke runs the same ad campaign for 5 years, or even 2 years. If the ad was really from 2003, it would long have been taken down.

SHTig says: big companies rotate their ads and styles from markets around the world. Ask UncleRonald (of this site) about McDonald’s – as of at least 2006, McDonald’s in Hong Kong were using styles for coffee cups, sugar packets and other items that were used in the US in the early 1980s. Mainland China heavily uses Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburgler, Birdie and friends regularly in its ad campaigns. I haven’t see those friends since probably 1990 in the US though.

2. Foreign companies are extremely careful in their advertising not to offend the local people or even people from another place.

SHTig says: yea, true, and now we see why. Great job and stirring up nothing, “netizens”. And, if we follow your argument ( 另外，在外资企业，特别是跨国幅度大的企业，每做一个营销按理都是要非常小心的。因为怕一不小心会得罪当地的人，也怕得罪别的地方的人。所以大家放眼看，在中国的哪个国际公司的广告是敢拿其他国家的人来开涮的) correctly and logically, then Coca-Cola’s marketing department thought up this ad to offend people ON PURPOSE. And since they depicted Tibetans, the intention must have been to offend Tibetans. But of course your argument is that they are supporting Tibetan independence. Your argument is weak on so many levels, but since it is representative of so many on the Chinese blogs, I will continue to walk through your comments. Though let’s hope at some point you address why Coca-Cola would run campaigns that might piss off customers and thereby cause it to lose money.

3. “可口可乐声称该广告是2003年德国推出的纯属胡扯。2003年德国根本就没有出现这款广告。俺于2002年底赴德国学习，刚开始在莱比锡大学海德学院学习德语，2003年10月迁至不来梅，而且2004年全年都没有回过国。但从未在莱比锡或不来梅火车站见过此类广告。也就是说，这组广告最早是2005年才会有。可口可乐在此事件当中没有中立地位，有什么信誉可言？！难道西方在西藏问题上撒的谎还不够多吗？谁还会相信伪善的西方”？He says its complete bullshit that Coca-Cola made this ad in 2003. He knows because he was studying in Germany in 2002, and from 2002-Oct 2003 this ad did not appear. He was also in Germany all of 2004, but he never saw this ad at the train station mentioned. So that means this ad came out in 2005 at the earliest. So Coca-Cola does not have a neutral position and is not believable. How can the West keep going on with all these lies about Tibet? Who can still believe the West?

SHTig: Coca-Cola is not a State-owned Enterprise. It is not owned by the government of “the West”, does not act on behalf of “the West” and does not represent “the West”. And it never has. Even if it is lying and trying to ruin China, which would be an interesting business model running counter to what all other companies hope to do in China, it is doing so on its own, and not as the West.

Now as for your Germany studying days, were you hanging around the train station all the time? Is it possible that you didn’t notice this simple advert?

And why do you continue to think that creating the ad in 2003 means running the ad in 2003?

Anyway, as you say, Coca-Cola is not neutral and the West keeps lying about Tibet, let’s move on..

4. “我觉得，图片给出的信息有一种非常不好的宣传和暗示，这样的广告迎合了德国一些民众，可作为中国人，我没有办法漠视，所以从今天起，坚决抵制可口可乐！”He feels that the picture is extremely bad propaganda and in poor taste. It is suitable for some Germans, but as a Chinese he is not able to ignore this, so starting from today, he will absolutely boycott Coca-Cola.

He then goes on to list ways of boycotting Coca-Cola, to send a message to the government not to support Western enterprises, to drive Coca-Cola out of China, Coca-Cola’s drinks aren’t that good anyway, and China has substitutes like FeiChang Cola and 非常可乐 and 王老吉, and besides, “中国人有几千年饮茶的历史.团结起来从此不喝可口可乐,饮茶吧” (China has thousands of years of history of drinking tea, let’s unite to not drink Coca-Cola but drink tea instead!)

SHTig: OK, drink your tea. And maybe quit that job of yours in the marketing department of that foreign enterprise too?

Picked up my new breakfast discount card today. The card for lunch and dinner isn’t coming out until February. No price changes from the last card, which was valid the last four months of 2007.

The coffee had a strange taste–almost like a chemical flavor. I’m not sure if it’s something new or if this is how it always tastes, and I am only aware of it now because I just returned from three weeks in the US. I can’t remember it tasting different after any of mt other trips home, though.

In other McD’s news, the constantly changing “third pie” is now red bean. Ugh.

I brought my coffee up to the counter and told them the problem. One woman smelled my cup and said, “No, this is definitely coffee.” For the next five  minutes I told them that I wasn’t claiming it was tea, but rather had somehow acquired the flavor of tea mixed with coffee. They countered by constantly repeating that it was definitely coffee and definitely not tea. Finally a manager came over and just poured me a new cup from a pot that I had already confirmed to be 100% coffee. These kinds of stubborn arguments with customers are common at Chinese restaurants, where servers often seem more concerned with winning a pointless argument than making sure the customer is happy. McDonald’s is usually pretty good about training its employees to avoid these arguments, but this one had the entire line of cashiers against me. (In case you’re wondering, no, there is absolutely no chance that I was wrong. I drink several cups of McD’s coffee almost every day, and I know what it should taste like. I also tasted all three pots–one with pure coffee, one with pure tea, and one with the mystery mix that had elements of both.)

SHTig’s Guess:  A McDonald’s employee used a sexy panythouse sock to prepare uncleronald’s coffee. 

McDonald’s released a new peach pie a few days ago, and I tried it for the first time today. Disappointing. The peach chunks (assuming that’s what they are) have no discernable flavor, which is instead supplied by some peach-like essence that tastes like candy. I give it a D.

What was wrong with apple pie? They had it, took it away, brought it back, and took it away again. Banana was decent as well. I guess this means I’m staying with pineapple.