The prefix "Mc" has become synonymous with the world's biggest burger chain. So have the Golden Arches.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The prefix "Mc" has become synonymous with the world's biggest burger chain.
It's not just in the name of the company. McDonald's has also launched McNuggets, McCafé, McFlurry, the McPlant, and CosMc's, and countless more products featuring its famous "Mc" moniker.
But for its newest burger, a supersized 14-ounce offering that's targeted at "the extra hungry," it's relying on a different part of the brand's iconography — the Golden Arches.
The new burger, the Big Arch, is currently being piloted in Canada and Portugal. If the trials go well, there are plans to roll it out globally.
The Golden Arches are "part of the heritage and the iconography" of McDonald's, Finola Kerrigan, professor of marketing at Birmingham Business School in the UK, told Business Insider.
Lots of the names of McDonald's products are unique to the chain. As well as the family of Mc's — like the McCrispy, McSpicy, McFlurry, McNuggets, McMuffin, and McPlant — you've also got the Big Mac and Filet-o-Fish. But many of its products also have more descriptive names with no company branding attached, like the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, the Triple Cheeseburger, and the Mayo Chicken.
By using a brand name rather than a descriptor — like calling it the Big Burger — companies can "signal superiority," Kerrigan said. "And so you elevate what is a big burger to a branded shiny thing."
And by opting for "Arch" rather than "Mc" or "Mac," you "don't take the risk of downgrading the Mac label until you're certain that it's going to win," David Hughes, emeritus professor of food marketing at Imperial College London, told BI.
But Kerrigan said that just using the word "Arch," rather than "Golden Arches," may not be enough to make an obvious connection with McDonald's in customers' minds.
Branding strategies don't always go to plan. For example, the McPlant's name signaled that the chain was taking plant-based food seriously and suggested that it would become part of its core lineup. But McDonald's dropped sales of the burger in the US after unsuccessful trials in California and Texas.
McDonald's has used arches branding for a product in the past, and it didn't go well.
It launched the Arch Deluxe in 1996, and the product flopped. The burger, intended to appeal to more sophisticated and "adult," used a mustard-mayo Arch Sauce, which the brand appeared to bring back for tests of a new product called the Archburger in 2018. That burger failed to make its way onto national menus.
The arches imagery is now returning to menus again, with the launch of the Big Arch and its accompanying Big Arch Sauce. The name of the sauce, like the name of the burger, gives no indication of what it actually contains.
Product names are important because "we talk about brands a lot," Kerrigan said.
"You show that you are in someone's club or part of their tribe by using the same kind of brand names," she said.
"Brand name has enormous value," Hughes added.
Other recent campaigns by McDonald's have made the most of its huge stream of brand imagery. Last year it launched the Grimace Shake and named its new coffee-focused chain after the lesser-known alien character CosMc.
Other recognizable mascots from the McDonald's universe include the Hamburglar and Birdie the Early Bird, as well as Ronald McDonald himself.
Are you a McDonald's superfan? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.
